Video at Bloomberg, Nassim Taleb interviewed on Occupy Wall Street, banking, and the future. More about banking than OWS. Taleb's position is quite similar to Warren Mosler's view with respect to banking as a public-private partnership and utility. Taleb looks at the issue from the perspective of risk and accountability. He thinks that the protests are basically about lack of accountability and that by not addressing the issue in a timely fashion, we may be crossed over the line to class warfare, which may be difficult to resolve.
Taleb may get this "right" insofar as his understanding of banks being public/private partnerships, however, he is horribly wrong on his view that the US is broke because we have so much "debt." He's been short Treasuries for who knows how long. He's either broke or has bankrupted the clients he advises as a result of this grossly misinformed view.
ReplyDeleteYeah Mike, I stopped listening to Taleb because his out of paradigm debt belief. It was overwhelming his other good insights.
ReplyDeleteIf you show him the math I still don't think he will go there. His risk based math is too much ingrained into what he says. Too bad for him because he could have been someone that really got it.
I doubt that Taleb is so heavily invested that he cannot change his mind — unlike many others. Roubini is moving in the direction of MMT, for example, while other Very Serious People continue digging in to their positions.
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