Submit Questions for Time magazine interview with Nassim Taleb | Business

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Nassim Taleb has a new book coming out, and is doing a new round of interviews to promote it. One of his stops will be here with TIME. But unlike the other interviews, here at TIME we let you do the asking. So if you have some questions for Mr. Black Swan himself, click here. Will Ben Bernanke cause hyperinflation? Is QE2 a dangerous gamble? Will Sarah Palin cause hyperinflation? Are the banks solvent? Does the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform bill make our economy any safer? If you want to know the answer to any of these questions, submit it to the link above, and we will ask it.

Here’s my question: Taleb has recently been bashing Bernanke saying he doesn’t know what he is doing because he didn’t see the financial crisis coming. But Taleb has also said that the financial crisis was a Black Swan. But isn’t the definition of a black swan something that people don’t see coming. Yes, we should be ready for unusual events. But don’t think you can criticize someone for not see something that by definition was unpredictable, or at least very, very unlikely. What say you Taleb?

gatesvp

Questions for Taleb:
1. What needs to change at the Federal Reserve for it to be able to uphold its mandate? Is the Fed’s mandate inherently flawed?

2. Wall Street is suffering on lots of levels. Not just crazy things like high-frequencey trading, but also with a serious reduction in new entrants. And “the markets” are basically going nowhere and have gone nowhere for 10 years. What needs to be done to fix the Exchanges and make them reflective of actual growth? (GDP has been up, right?)

3. The US is clearly having not just an unemployment crisis, but an educational crisis. The US not only charges more than anyone else for post-secondary education, they still don’t graduate enough people to meet demand. Do we have any simple solution(s)? Are we just going to “leave out” the 10-20% of unskilled workers going forward?
davidlachnicht

Do you think the any actions by person or persons in the Fed rise to the level of criminal behavior?
yourguidetochina

Will this devalue the dollar? How is this different than the complaints that the US is making that China is trying to devalue their currency?

Steve
http://www.YourGuideToChina.com
cheaterswininamerica

There are studies that show cheating is rampant in American colleges.
http://www.caveon.com/resources/cheating_statistics.htm
Cheating comes in many forms and forms a habit of cheating. It leads to misinformed decisions. Let us suppose a reporter or blogger cheated by not reading your book, before supposing he could define your ideas, and then ask you a question about it. Is it better to try to educate the cheater, report the cheater, or ignore the cheater?
jpersonna

Stephen, that’s a common way to misunderstand Taleb. It’s hard to make the case (politely) in less than a book length treatment, but:

Basically you tell foolish people they are betting on bad information, and they say “but it’s the best information we have!”

They aren’t smart enough to say “so maybe I shouldn’t bet?”

Bernanke is making an active intervention in the economy based on the best information he has. Taleb isn’t saying switch to someone else, with some different dataset or outlook. He’s saying don’t intervene in things you don’t understand.
jpersonna

BTW, I’d hope that Bernanke views his action as commensurate with his uncertainty … but again does anyone understand their uncertainty in a domain such as this.

Black swans don’t just mean an unexpected outcome, it means your past risk assessment is kaput.
http://w3on7qut.wordpress.com adamh0

Mr. Gandel –

1) His first name is “Nassim”, not “Nissam” (your title has it wrong).

2) He doesn’t criticize Bernanke “because he didn’t see the financial crisis coming” as you say (you cannot find that in the video you link to); he criticizes him for his failure to understand or acknowledge risk.

I’m surprised you missed that.
http://www.capitalismv3.com curtd59

Mr. Gandel,

Taleb’s recommendation in The Black Swan, is that we must build our nations such that we recognize the COMMON-NESS of disruptive, unforeseen events. Therefore we should seek stability, security, and safety, and not expose ourselves to risks.

As one of the other commenters above states, we should never have assumed such a thing as complex derivatives would provide risk mitigation — corrupt rating companies and banks or not.

We should build policy that expects the unforeseen. We should avoid policy that invites fragility from the impact of the unforeseen.

This is probably an anathema to Time’s editorial staff. Because Taleb’s premise is core of Conservative political philosophy: take small risks, work through the market, and do not empower politicians to expose us to risks: Maintain strength and capital, both human and material, so that we can survive the inevitable shocks to our system.

Of course, if we just read Aesop’s Fables we can learn the single lesson that Aesop attempted to teach us: avoiding the error of hubris – overestimating our knowledge and understanding.
dochosvet

I thought the black swan turned in to a white swan with age and became a thing of beauty. Or maybe I have my fables mixed up sort of like my faith in bankers. That became the ugly duckling.