Nassim Taleb Interview – The Brian Lehrer Show 052110

HatTip to Dave Lull

Nassim Taleb Interview – The Brian Lehrer Show 052110

WNYC-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, former hedge fund advisor, professor, and author of the best-selling book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Random House Trade Paperbacks; 2 edition, 2010), continues his exploration of randomness and the unpredictability of markets with the new edition of his book. Will the new financial reform bill help predict the next “Black Swan”?

Regulations are what got us here, because the regulators, with Basel ll, allowed banks to use measures of risk that were absolutely not scientific.
Give me a regulation and a cup of coffee and a few hours and I’ll come up with a way to beat that regulation… you see?

Keywords: economist detractors, hard assets, government bonds, fragility, robust to forecast errors, why should innocent future generations pay the price, failed auction, new suckers, long term interest rates, Paul Krugman, private debt to public debt, arbitrage tax laws or regulation, Basel ll, transparent derivatives trading, eliminating moral hazard from the system, punish people who make the mistakes, low debt, small size firms, society not bailing out failing companies