the efficient market is dead and always has been.
This is what people mean when they say "efficient market" in this context:
> In finance, the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) asserts that financial markets are "informationally efficient". In consequence of this, one cannot consistently achieve returns in excess of average market returns on a risk-adjusted basis, given the information available at the time the investment is made.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
There are variations of this hypothesis, so saying "it's dead" is meaningless unless you specify which one is "dead" and how it has failed.
Also: Empirical analyses have consistently found problems with the efficient-market hypothesis, the most consistent being that stocks with low price to earnings (and similarly, low price to cash-flow or book value) outperform other stocks. Which is presumably due to cognitive bias. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
PS: It's a reasonable simplification that's useful for the average investor, but not policy makers for example.