Nassim Taleb (Black Swan) open letter to David Cameron

Taleb needs to find something new to talk about. In his book Fooled By Randomness, he takes a paragraph and makes it a chapter. Takes a chapter and makes it a book, talking endlessly about black swans, how people who are successful are successful because they got lucky and repeating analogy after analogy to make the same basic point. In this post he makes sweeping statements about debt being bad, based on wisdom from Babylonian times and Roman proverbs:<p>"David, you must counter this complexity by lowering indebtedness. We have known since Babylonian times that debt is treacherous and allows no room for mistakes: felix qui nihil debet goes the Roman proverb ("happy is he who owes nothing")."<p>He sounds like Ahmedinejan in his letter to former president Bush advising him to embrace the ways of the prophets of old :)<p>There are many situations where debt is your friend but like all good things it can be abused. Common Taleb, find something new to talk about! Black Swan is so 2002!

"Work on building a "robust" society, capable of withstanding errors, in which the role of finance (hence debt) would be minimal. We want a society in which people can make mistakes without risk of total collapse. Silicon Valley offers a good example, where people have the chance to fail fast (and repeatedly)."

Having not read his book, was I the only person annoyed that he used the phrase "black swan" a dozen times in the first paragraph without qualifying it?<p>He could have been saying <i>"You and your party may be the only hope we have for a resilient society insulated from negative oranges and in which everyone has the opportunity to benefit from positive oranges."</i> for all the difference it makes to me.

Unless you're an entrenched partisan, I think it's still a tad too early to call Obama's economic policies "disastrous" or "calamitous."

This is ridiculous. The financial crisis was not a "black swan." Many people saw it coming and prepared accordingly. It was only groupthink and willful ignorance which kept most people from doing so.

I think Taleb makes an excellent point with his Black Swan theory. The point is, that we don't know what will happen. We don't know and governments don't know. Problem is, governments spend like they know :-)

Before one gets hysterical, consider debt as a function of GDP.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt</a>

I wonder how Taleb reconciles his views on probability with respect to Cameron winning the next election in May?

Forget the Black Swan, please God just deliver us from Cameron.<p>Margaret Thatcher when asked what was her greatest political achivement - 'Tony Blair' she replied. Isn't Cameron just a more greasy version of the slimy Blair, Black Swan spotter or not?

Submarine.

&#62; It is a low-probability, high-impact event that, because of its rarity and the instability of the environment, cannot be scientifically evaluated in terms of risk and return.<p>I stopped reading here. The <i>only</i> objective evaluation of economic matters is in scientific, risk-and-return terms. Anything else is quackery, fear-mongering, or worse.<p>A great deal of evil has been done in the last decade or so in the name of protecting us against horrible things. We are told that much good has come of it, because nothing horrible has happened. While I'm sure this is partly true, I wouldn't mind trading a few more horrible things for a little more autonomy.