Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan.” Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of
“The Black Swan,” said investors who lost money in the
financial crisis should sue the Swedish Central Bank for
awarding the Nobel Prize to economists whose theories he said
brought down the global economy.

“I want to make the Nobel accountable,” Taleb said today
in an interview in London. “Citizens should sue if they lost
their job or business owing to the breakdown in the financial
system.”

Taleb said that the Nobel Prize for Economics has conferred
legitimacy on risk models that caused investors’ losses and
taxpayer-funded bailouts. Sweden’s central bank will announce
the winner of this year’s award on Oct. 11.

Taleb singled out the Nobel award to Harry Markowitz,
Merton Miller and William Sharpe in 1990 for their work on
portfolio theory and asset-pricing models.