Earlier today, we discussed the upcoming bonus season and the fact that, for those who are employed by banks, it’s looking to be something of a disappointment. Numbers are estimated to be down 20-30 percent on average from last year, with fixed-income being hit the hardest. For many, it’s cause for some preemptive JO&C’ing at the desk this morning and some curling up into the fetal position this afternoon. According to Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, however, you drying those eyes, picking yourself up off the floor and thanking your lucky stars you’re getting anything ’cause if he were in charge? You’d get no-thing. Continue reading »
Nassim Taleb
At this point, Nassim N. Taleb has explained many times (1) what caused the financial crisis and (2) what will cause the next one. This is actually pretty simple stuff and as he’s sick of repeating it, we’ll summarize:
(1) the Nobel Prize Committee, and
(2) knowing things.
We learned the second part when Taleb dropped by the U.S. Congress last week to warn them away from the dangerous trap of setting up an Office of Financial Research to collect statistical data from banks and try to analyze it to reduce risk. Taleb’s prepared testimony included some polite objections to this plan:
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Though his schedule is extremely packed, Nassim Taleb, who knows everything there is to know about risk while Ben Bernanke knows nothing, has agreed to co-author a paper with the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets department “for the G-20 to develop ways to apply his method for identifying tail risks, or the chances of low probability, high-impact event.” Topics discussed will presumably include but not be limited to destroying the Nobel prize before it can destroy us.
“Did Ben Bernanke see the crisis?” Nassim Taleb asked on Bloomberg TV today. “No,” Taleb answered himself, “He was flying the plane and he crashed the plane…[Bernanke] reminds me of the LTCM people. They had brilliant people with great academic records and they blew up the fund and almost blew up Wall Street…Bernanke is someone who talks about returns without talking about risk. It’s identical to a pilot who is talking about speed — not talking about safety. The measures he is using, this quantitative easing, may work but should it fail the risks are humongous.” Continue reading »
Over the last several years, people have been obsessed with determining who truly caused the financial crisis. Was it Alan Greenspan? Was it the banks? Was it the mortgage lenders? Evil short sellers? People who bought homes they couldn’t actually afford? Jimmy Cayne drug dealer? It’s up for debate and no one has yet to be unanimously, definitively blamed. Today in London, Nassim Taleb revealed the true villain, who’s been hiding in plain sight. Continue reading »
[via BI]
This was worth emerging from his self-imposed quiet time to say.
Earlier: Nassim Taleb Has A Short Idea For The Homo Sapiens Of The World
It’s “a no brainer” to sell short Treasuries, Nassim Taleb, a principal at Universa Investments LP in Santa Monica, California, said at a conference in Moscow today. “Every single human being should have that trade.”
Nassim Taleb Swears He’s Done With This Place, Signs Off In A Huff– Who Should He Take With Him?
By Bess Levin
Nassim Taleb cannot believe– be-lieve– Ben Bernanke is going to be reappointed chairman of the Federal Reserve. He cannot believe he lives in a world where this could be allowed to happen! It’s outrageous, egregious, preposterous. Taleb is so disgusted (not at Bernanke, who has but the mind of a child, and doesn’t understand what he’s done) that he’s decided to take his black swans and leave. He knows you’ll miss him but sorry, this is too much to bear. He’s finished. Unless of course he’s forced by his publishers to do a little self-promotion, but barring that once in a lifetime event, he’s gone. Good day.
What I am seeing and hearing on the news — the reappointment of Bernanke — is too hard for me to bear. I cannot believe that we, in the 21st century, can accept living in such a society. I am not blaming Bernanke (he doesn’t even know he doesn’t understand how things work or that the tools he uses are not empirical); it is the Senators appointing him who are totally irresponsible — as if we promoted every doctor who caused malpractice. The world has never, never been as fragile. Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific.
Nassim Taleb Would’ve Trusted Raj Rajaratnam With The Keys To His House, Not His Fridge
By Bess Levin
So you can imagine The Black Swan author’s surprise to find out his b-school chum is an alleged insider trading specialist.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, got a shock when he opened the newspaper last weekend and saw a picture of an old classmate from Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania.
“He was an extremely likeable fellow, chubby, a warm personality. If I had to give my keys to someone in case of getting locked out of the house, he’d be the kind of guy I’d go to.”
As Tim Geithner embarks on his campaign for confidence in China, it seems not everybody is so sure that Timmy G and the boys back in Washington have this whole running up massive debt levels and record fiscal deficit thing quite under control. Former Chinese central bank advisor Yu Yongding wants to check Geithner’s homework to see if the numbers actually add up or if he is just looking at the answer key at the back of the book.
Among the objectives the Obama administration has claimed it will achieve is a reduction in the fiscal deficit from its current level of 12.9% of GDP to approximately 3%. In response to this laudable but lofty ambition, Yu wants to know if “Geithner can show us some arithmetic. We need to know how the U.S. government can achieve this objective.” Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, the His Black Swaness, Nassim Taleb, appears to have already done the arithmetic and is not so convinced of the new math the Treasury and Fed are using.
Universa Investments LP, which has links to “Black Swan” author and New York University professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is starting a hedge fund to bet that efforts by governments and central banks to end the global recession will lead to hyperinflation, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Taleb. The fund will invest in commodities and options on oil and gold stocks, the Journal said.
So let’s get ready to rumble- will defending champion Nassim Taleb (obviously wearing the black trunks) retain his title of being right at the expense of most of the free world or will up-and-comer Tim Geithner score an unexpected knockout blow? Only time will tell but conventional wisdom says always bet on black.
