{"id":5730,"date":"2013-05-06T11:53:28","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T18:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/?p=5730"},"modified":"2013-05-06T11:53:28","modified_gmt":"2013-05-06T18:53:28","slug":"false-prophet-nostradamus-and-the-financial-crisis-quixotic-finance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/false-prophet-nostradamus-and-the-financial-crisis-quixotic-finance\/","title":{"rendered":"FALSE PROPHET \u2013 NOSTRADAMUS AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS | QUIXOTIC FINANCE"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>Not everything Nassim N. Taleb says is rubbish. For someone writing about so many different things (people call him \u2018eclectic\u2019, although he prefers to be called a thinker), it would be quite a feat never to say anything interesting. His criticism of financial forecasters is undoubtedly warranted \u2013 for the most part. He\u2019s also right in observing that forecasters have a bad habit of finding silly excuses for their misses, and tend to take credit for predictions they haven\u2019t actually made (e.g. hindsight bias). But when I read Taleb, I\u2019m constantly reminded of the pot that called the kettle a swan (or something).<\/p>\n<p>One of Taleb\u2019s achievements that boosted his popularity is his correct prediction of the financial crisis. Or should I say, his claim that he correctly predicted the crisis, or one particular event that occurred during the crisis. That claim is not only made by himself and his fans, but to my surprise, it is also admitted by some of his critics.<\/p>\n<p>Before we have a closer look at the precise \u2018prediction\u2019 he\u2019s credited with, let\u2019s read again this passage by the master himself (The Black Swan \u2013 NN Taleb, 2010 (2nd edition), pp 153-154)&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/quixoticfinance.com\/false-prophet-nostradamus-and-the-financial-crisis\/\">FALSE PROPHET \u2013 NOSTRADAMUS AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS | QUIXOTIC FINANCE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not everything Nassim N. Taleb says is rubbish. For someone writing about so many different things (people call him \u2018eclectic\u2019, although he prefers to be called a thinker), it would be quite a feat never to say anything interesting. His criticism of financial forecasters is undoubtedly warranted \u2013 for the most part. He\u2019s also right [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[407],"tags":[715],"class_list":["post-5730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-haters","tag-falkenstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5731,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730\/revisions\/5731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}