Nassim Taleb on the Credit Crunch
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - a former trader turned philosopher of knowledge - made lots of money when the stock market crashed in 1987 and likely earned millions more from the success of his books Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan.
He recently appeared on Bloomberg Radio. I haven’t had a chance to listen to the interview yet, but a summary says many of the problems can be traced to bank leadership, which must change before the credit crisis can be resolved.
Here is the MP3 of his interview:
http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/Economics/On_Economy/vq9bffStoNko.mp3
Source:
http://banking.about.com/b/2008/08/21/credit-crunch-to-stay-until-bank-leadership-goes.htm
I don’t want to sound cynical, but the worst thing the government did was to deregulate the banking/mortgage industry. Without regulation, no matter what type of bank leadership there is, we’re going to encounter problems. There are just too many people trying to make a fast buck, without regard of the consequences. When all those subprime loans were being made, somebody must have wondered how all those people now defaulting on their home loans were ever going to be able to pay them back.