Cathy Newman interviews Nassim Taleb, Dec 5, 2012 Channel4.com
Former banker and author of The Black Swan and Antifragile, Professor Nassim Taleb says the government should do “something symbolic” to bankers who have not paid the price for the economic crisis.
by Jacob Goldstein
Here’s the latest Planet Money Deep Read — our occasional series of long-ish interviews with writers and thinkers.
Today, we hear from Nassim Taleb, the former Wall Street trader who published a book called the Black Swan back in 2007. The book was re-issued earlier this year, with a long new section called “On Robustness & Fragility.”
The book argues that most economic models fail because they don’t take into account rare, high-impact events that wind up driving history. (Taleb calls these events Black Swans.) The argument came out looking pretty good after the 2008 financial crisis.
The new section of the book includes, among other things, a prescription for withstanding a Black Swan.
The short version: Get rid of debt.