Economic Bricolage
We should treat failed entrepreneurs with the reverence that we reserve for fallen soldiers.
The Federal Reserve, in Mr. Taleb’s view, is an iatrogenic institution run by fragilistas doing more harm than good by trying to root out randomness. This might seem a cheap shot were it not for Mr. Taleb’s track record in spotting some of the ingredients of the recent financial crisis. In particular, after 2003, he took a lot of criticism because “I kept telling everybody who would listen to me, including random taxi drivers (well almost), that the company Fannie Mae FNMA +0.36% was sitting on a ‘barrel of dynamite.'” He has little mercy for the Keynesian economist Joseph Stiglitz and the Orszag brothers, Peter and Jonathan, economic consiglieres to Democratic administrations, who insisted around the same time that the probability of default in the government-sponsored enterprises was “so small that it is difficult to detect.”