Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the best-selling author of the book The Black Swan which describes Taleb's theory with the same name. Taleb took the name of his book and theory from the medieval European assumption that a "black swan" is something that could never exist.Observer: The New Sage of Wall Street (September 28, 2008) However, when Europeans encountered the continent of Africa, they found actual black swans, making what was formerly though impossible, possible.Observer: The New Sage of Wall Street (September 28, 2008) Taleb has popularized the term "Black Swan" to refer to the role of randomness and uncertainty in complex global financial markets.Observer: The New Sage of Wall Street (September 28, 2008)

The Black Swan theory is a theory of randomness and uncertainty. It makes the claim that unpredictable events are much more common than people generally think. The theory is often used to describe the collapse of the financial market in 2008. According to the Black Swan Theory, unpredictable events are the norm and not the exception. The information overflow in today's society results in people interpreting data inaccurately and creating correlations that are not always relevant, when randomness more often is the rule.Newsweek: Don't Trust Anyone In a Tie (November 15, 2008)

The following quotes are excerpts of Taleb's writing, taken from The Back Swan.

"Banks hire dull people and train them to be even more dull. If they look conservative, it's only because their loans go bust on rare, very rare occasions. But... bankers are not conservative at all. They are just phenomenally skilled at self-deception by burying the possibility of a large, devastating loss under the rug."Official Site: Warnings that the Imbeciles Chose to Ignore

"The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard... True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur—I shiver at the thought."Official Site: Warnings that the Imbeciles Chose to Ignore