America has more Nobel laureates in economics than any other country. There are thousands of experts in universities, banks, brokerage companies, insurance companies, etc.
Thousands of people work for the government and tell our presidents and the Congress what to do to keep economy growing and to keep people employed.
There is also a mighty Federal Reserve System. It is the central banking system of the United States. “It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, largely in response to a series of financial panics, particularly a severe panic in 1907…
The U.S. Congress established three key objectives for monetary policy in the Federal Reserve Act: Maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates… The first two objectives are sometimes referred to as the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate… Its duties have expanded over the years, and today, according to official Federal Reserve documentation, include conducting the nation’s monetary policy, supervising and regulating banking institutions, maintaining the stability of the financial system and providing financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions…The Fed also conducts research into the economy and releases numerous publications, such as the Beige Book.”
With all this tremendous pool of experts how did it happen that the USA and many other countries were recently in the financial crisis and still are very slowly recuperating? Unemployment is still high, financial system is not very stable, interest rates are artificially kept very low and it especially hurts senior citizens.
Some people believe that it is a result of the fact that so-called experts in economics relied on the wrong economic models.
One of those people is Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He warned long time ago that the way financial and monetary policies conducted was wrong and will lead to a financial crisis.
Who is this man? I will summarize what I know after reading information on the internet and after reading his books “Fooled by Randomness” (2001) and “The Black Swan” (2007).
Nassim Nicholas Taleb was born in a mighty and very rich family. Then the family lost almost everything. He got a good education and wanted to pursue his interests in economics, mathematics, philosophy. To be able to do what he wanted he needed financial independence. So he applied his efforts and his knowledge to this particular purpose and made a fortune. At the same time he proved that his theories are valid and usable.
You’ll find more information about Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the article below. I hope you’ll find time to read the article. It is very, very interesting.
I have no doubts that Taleb is today’s intellectual giant, that his views on economics and politics, his philosophy must be studied and applied in our society.
However, as I mentioned in the title of this post Nassim Nicholas Taleb hated by many experts. He hated by many economists and statisticians because he states that their knowledge limited and not up to today’s changes in all areas of life, economy and science. He also hated by many politicians because he states that the policy of expanding government debt is leading to a catastrophe.
I think that it is a must to read mentioned above Taleb’s books. They are not written for experts. They are serious and very personal books written by a person who learned views of many intellectual giants before him and decided whom to believe and what to believe.
Below is an article about Taleb’s tweets. I enjoyed it. Hope you’ll like it too.
*
Related articles
- Thoughtful tweets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (trejdify.com)
PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
Reblogged this on closetoeighty and commented:
In November of 2013 I wrote the post below. This summer I read Taleb’s book “The Black Swan”. It is an extraordinary book! I believe that everyone must read the book (it is not an easy reading) or at least look it up at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_(Taleb_book) and choose what particular parts (chapters) of the book to read now. It seems to me that everyone will find a lot of interesting in the book.
I just started “Antifragility.”
Did you read the other two?
I read “Black Swan.” I listened to “Fooled by Randomness” on audio book. (So my attention was half somewhere else.)
I never read or even looked at “Dynamic Hedging” (or something like that) which I believe was truly his first book, but which was much more scholarly and not widely followed.