Nassim Taleb Criticizes Obama, Bernanke, and Summers

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/08/18/David_Cameron_in_Conversation_with_Nassim_Taleb

The Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb addresses the financial missteps of the Obama administration. "The problem we have in America is that nobody has addressed the fundamental error." He emphasizes over-reliance on forecasts as the root of the problem.

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Nassim Taleb is the best-selling author of Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. So called 'Black Swan Events' are climactic, random and hard-to-predict events that have been entirely unexpected, and often hitherto perceived to be impossible.

At this breakfast event chaired by Danny Finkelstein, Comment Editor of the Times, Nassim Taleb explains the relevance of his ideas to the economic crisis, and argue for measures to create a more Black Swan-robust society. David Cameron responds and takes part in a discussion with the audience.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an essayist, belletrist, and researcher.

Taleb is currently a researcher at London Business School. He the Deans Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Fellow in Mathematics in Finance, Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University (since 1999), and research fellow, Wharton School Financial Institutions Center, and Chairman, Empirica LLC.

Taleb held senior trading positions with trading houses in New York and London and operated as a floor trader before founding Empirica LLC. His degrees include an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. from the University of Paris. He is the author of Dynamic Hedging, Fooled by Randomness, and The Black Swan.

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[kraskata2012]

Taleb is one of the few people who make sense. Summers is stupid, ignorant and greedy son of a bitch.

[davejoe75]

Economics is not physics. It's a social science that studies human behavior over time and makes predictions about trends.

A person can't control trillions of micro-decisions occurring every day in our economy. It's our rulers' fatal conceit!

[azotidjr]

@equsnarnd Taleb is as close to an Austrian as it gets with his decentralization and anti-fragility themes.  Google "The Black Swan of Cairo".

[SaveTheWheat]

YES economics is physics first! What goes up must come down. The stock market is the real black market. It is an entire holographic universe that favors the scum of the earth.

[SaveTheWheat]

@davejoe75

It is physics *first*. Absolutely.

[SaveTheWheat]

@NewbWorksDwarven

No. There are those who understand.

[NewbWorksDwarven]

There really is no one who understands the underpinnings, the backdrop and the fundamentals of what is really going on in the world economically and philosophically. More important philosophically or epistemologically.

[equsnarnd]

@flipdabird02 Despite you kindergarten approach, I listened to the clip again and am more inclined to agree with you about him being right. Which would please me as those are my views as well.

[flipdabird02]

You're a fckuing idiot. And also a bigger idiot that's quick to jump the gun on saying that Nassim doesn't understand. For example, #3 - he's actually talking to an audience in England, so he said "You guys (meaning you Brits), have a good Central Banker"...

[equsnarnd]

@pretorious700 That opinion and a 2 bucks will get you a cup of coffee. A small cup.

[pretorious700]

@equsnarnd Keynesianism IS macro economics. The whole macro economic/huge aggregate models approach is what has failed. Taleb has forgotten more about economics than you'll ever know.

[pretorious700]

@atulbakale01 Please, he's talking about central banking globally.