{"id":6241,"date":"2013-10-13T21:17:42","date_gmt":"2013-10-14T04:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/?p=6241"},"modified":"2013-10-14T12:22:14","modified_gmt":"2013-10-14T19:22:14","slug":"commonsense-ideas-behind-talebs-rhetorical-flourishes-ft-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/commonsense-ideas-behind-talebs-rhetorical-flourishes-ft-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Commonsense ideas behind Taleb\u2019s rhetorical flourishes | FT.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

At the national level, the system is more fragile. One tall tower is more likely to fall in a storm than a lawn of grass. This leads to Taleb\u2019s contention that US federal debt is the most fragile of all, and should be decentralised, because default is unthinkable. Hence, \u201cI\u2019m kind of happy with what\u2019s happening in the US now. We\u2019d like the government periodically to come back with a plan, just like a corporation that has a debt addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Implementing this idea in practice without extreme volatility will be hard. But the Taleb arguments remain strong. Fragility, he insists, trumps growth. If a plane has an elevated chance of crashing, even if that chance is very small, we would give that priority over its speed or its price. So, governments should have a risk manager\u2019s mindset, and not try to prod the economy into growing. Without a risk-averse mindset, risks will grow.<\/p>\n

Source: FT.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Part ll<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

HatTip to Dave Lull<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the national level, the system is more fragile. One tall tower is more likely to fall in a storm than a lawn of grass. This leads to Taleb\u2019s contention that US federal debt is the most fragile of all, and should be decentralised, because default is unthinkable. Hence, \u201cI\u2019m kind of happy with what\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[724,80],"class_list":["post-6241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video","tag-ft-com","tag-var"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6241","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=6241"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6252,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6241\/revisions\/6252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}