Re:Taleb - the new sage of Wall Street |
by calambrac on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @06:50AM
(#325615)
I think you misunderstand what a "black swan" event is. It isn't necessarily an amazingly rare or complicated thing; actually, kind of the opposite. It's an event that is thought to be rare based only on the flawed reasoning that it hasn't been seen yet - the danger of a black swan comes from people betting so heavily on that perceived rarity.
No, this scenario has been seen often before and should be well understood by anyone who knows their history. Or have any common sense.
Taleb's book deals (among other subjects) with the reasons why, in the real world, nearly all of us - regardless of common sense and knowledge of history - continue to be surprised with such events.
Re:Taleb - the new sage of Wall Street |
by calambrac on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @01:34PM
(#325854)
A complete lockup of the global financial system has been seen often before? Come on.
As for whether or not the scenario should be well understood by anyone who has common sense: yes, that's the point. People were blinded by their faulty statistical models, and stopped acting in a sensible way.
Re:Taleb - the new sage of Wall Street |
by antiismist on Monday October 06, 2008 @02:06PM
(#325148)
Well, it all seems so simple and inevitable now, but we have the benefit of hindsight. A year ago trillion dollar losses, nearly trillion dollar bailouts, and general financial collapse was not so obvious.
How about 8 years ago?
http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_1_the_trillion_dollar.ht...
If you look through all the bank-yadayada and think for yourself it's both very simple and inevitable. And the only thing that will fix it is bringing prices and spending back to their natural level, which is well below what it is today.