Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Nassim Taleb: Robustness and Fragility

Voltron says: The second edition paperback of Nassim Taleb's instant classic book "The Black Swan" has been released with new chapters on "Robustness and Fragility" here two excerpts:
Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence.”

Let us move voluntarily into a robust economy by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalizing the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here (by claiming restitution of the funds paid to, say, Robert Rubin or banksters whose wealth has been subsidized by taxpaying schoolteachers), and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties. Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller firms, a richer ecology, no speculative leverage—a world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks, and in which companies are born and die every day without making the news.

Voltron says: Nassim's hedge fund, "Universa", was at one point accused of causing the 1,000 point "Flash Crash" of 2:45 on May 6th. Here is a video of Nassim (briefly) addressing that and other matters:

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