Tomorrow morning 7:30 am Eastern... The author of The Black Swan will talk about the crash. Should be interesting...
he was on CNBC earlier on...said something abt hyperinflation in the USA...wasnt paying much attention had a pozoo on
Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9XrP_QWS-M They keep asking him: Is this a black swan? How about that? Is that a black swan? No? Then certainly this and that must be a black swan... Jeez... We get it. The man has written a book on black swans...
I watched him on CNBC and was doing alot of shucking and jiving. He is normally more direct. Disappointment really, hope he is better prepared in 15 min, or is he talking up some new book.
How does he not call that disaster last week a black swan? If ever there was one, there it is. The Europe banks locked up and away we went. He won't talk about it, then he goes on to say mounting debt could cause one.... well wtf was last week then?? The leverage of the debts held by banks cause them to shut down, or at least the fear of them doing so, sends equities crashing. It cost 1 trillion dollars to fix. 1 trillion...Man... and he won't comment. Then I will. F him. Grow a pair.
First off, I feel bad for Taleb. He spent years of his life writing a book trying to show people the philosophy that you need to prepare for singular disasters that could come from nowhere. It's a profound view on the world, and unfortunately, those morons on CNBC distill it to meaning every market crash = black swan. No wonder he didn't want to answer their questions, because afterwards, they would be saying "DR. DOOM TALEB DECLARES 5/6/2010 A BLACK SWAN!" CNBC doesn't care about the truth, they care about getting quotes and soundbites. They were sitting their trying to coax it from Taleb, so that they could use it on their promos, and he wouldn't give it to them,. Good for him!
Thats like blaming the Boy Scouts for a hurricane.... Only the Girl Guides would propose such a theory.
You're spot on jedwards. For me the idea of Black Swans is to make you think about a wide range of possible outcomes. The financial services industry does not want the investing public to consider possibilities that involve equities declining. For example, I doubt they use the performance of the Japanese stockmarket from 1990 to present (down by about 75% from 1990 levels) when trying to sell / market investments related to the stockmarket. However while it doesn't happen often, it is possible that equities decline by 75% in 20-year periods. Being aware of the Black Swan concept is about being open to these possibilities. As you said, it's not about providing a yes or no answer regarding whether or not Event X constitutes a Black Swan.