Taleb’s new word is in the title of his new book “Antifragile.” It’s a kind of philosophical essay that reinforces and expands upon 20th-century economist Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction. Some things need to break in order for the whole to improve, and we resist this tendency — by coddling fragile systems such as banking — at our peril. Yet at this moment, the coddlers, or “fragilistas,” as Taleb calls them, are very much in charge.

If antifragility means redundancy — when you keep extra commodities on hand in case of natural disaster, you are actually better off after a hurricane because the price of the items you hold skyrockets — then debt is a particularly dangerous kind of fragility. Debt can spiral, accelerate. At a firm, doubts about your solvency can lead to a “margin call,” which in turn means you have to raise more money.

via Give us a break – NYPOST.com.