Shiller’s personal style could not be more different than Taleb’s (as far as I can see, in terms of public persona), but it seems his ideas about continuous work-out mortgages and a futures market for hedging real estate risk will also be passed over until we experience greater catastrophe.

I’m glad you found the links worthwhile. When I read Kwak’s piece I was thrown back 25 years to my first reading of “Discipline and Punish” for an anthro class. Foucault made the individual and particular human body not only relevant but essential for discussing the most elevated and abstract of social constructs.

John Robb, like Bruce Stirling, is one of the voices I’ve come across that are absolutely indispensable for future-proofing. I don’t know how anyone could possibly think they have true bearings in this world without reading “Brave New War” or having at least a glancing familiarity with Mechanist v Shapers.

Stirling’s blog:
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/

A classic indispensable John Robb post:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/02/henry-okah.html

John also blogs at:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/johnrobb/

I try to keep up with Taleb, but I guess I missed him claiming firsties on the only thing Rumsfeld ever said that made sense as far as I’m aware.

When I referred to the military and Taleb, I was thinking more about the sort of very smart, highly educated both institutionally and through personal initiative, open-minded, and very likely-to-be-passed-over-for-promotion commissioned officers who somehow made colonel and, say, would’ve volunteered to train future leaders of the Afghan National Army in 2004. Pure conjecture.

could not agree more!

From this recent Accrued Interest post
http://bit.ly/kdL76 (look at the last chart!)

it would seem deflation will be reigning champion, which in my mind will not create a “jolt” of any sort, just a slow painful death.

To take the other side, if Hugh Hendry is still running with this thesis, his P&L must look scary.

I used to be a deflationista myself, which would by default make me an equity bear. Now, especially after the move in yields, I just don’t know what I am. “Waiting for more data” is probably my current setting. But I would associate a deflation with a severe and sustained rally in government bonds as in Japan, not its opposite.

Would I be wrong there?

Alan, thanks, it was a good link. Funny what you say about national security. Taleb claims he was the author of Rumsfeld’s famous “known unknowns” riff. He has clearly had an influence on the language.

Yes, as I say in the post (though you might have missed it if you scrolled down to the joke), I worry that partly due to his personal style Taleb’s moment for materially impacting the debate is passing. Another jolt of fear and loathing would certainly help.

As for Taleb and his influence, I suspect we’re likely to see it earlier and stronger in national security than finance. He’s mentioned in the past how impressed he is with US military’s approach to evaluating and managing risk. I think James Kwak is onto something in this post about why his influence may not take hold in finance until we experience greater catastrophe.

http://baselinescenario.com/2009/06/02/the-view-from-the-top/

Taleb’s situation reminds me of John Robb, in that both are empiricists first and thus express themselves in terms of the realm they know best — in Robb’s case, military and tech.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/

But, please, don’t be so hard on your feeble-minded readers. Perhaps some, like myself, came for a little diversion after wading through a stack of regulatory filings. A slog, and I fear corrosive to the brain. We really do need a new word to characterize the prose of policymakers.

So now that a little piffle has brought you some new readers, don’t carp. Make good use of it — as you did by referring to your Buttonwood critique. Some nice points in it about the countercyclical nature of the equity deals markets. But I’m afraid you would label me a perma-bear as well. I’m with James Grant when he says: “Deflation is the fact. Inflation is the forecast.” And it won’t be pretty for equities and so-called safe haven Treasurys.

LOL

TRB

The popularity of the “off topic balderdash” is galling, you are right. My closely reasoned piece on epistemological error on the part of Buttonwood gets no readers, while my stupid economist joke gets literally 10 million eyeballs or 5 million readers, give or take the odd pirate (how many do you get? maybe you should think about lightening your site up a bit, like mine).

Of course, I would never corrupt a pristine and highly-trafficked blogsite such as mine with such off-topic balderdash, but then I am me.

By the way, I have conclusive evidence that Epicurus could beat Spinoza in arm wrestling with six premises and two theorems tied behind his back. Just sayin’.

A man in a balloon gondola lands in the middle of a field. he asks a passerby, “where am I?” The man responds: “You are standing in a gondola in the middle of a field.”
“you must be an economist,” the man says.
“yes, how did you know?”
“Everything you said is true and irrelevant.”

… and then the economist replies

“and you must be a policy maker”
“yes”, the man says “how did you know?”
“well, you’ve been drifting along with no idea of where you’re going and no coherent plan for how to get there. Now you’re exactly in the same situation you were before, but somehow you now believe it’s my fault”.

Fortunately, I have run out of economist jokes. To continue the funfest, I would need to resort to Jane and Tarzan jokes. And I really don’t want to go there. Fat tails are a safer topic.

For the record, I rather like the Epicurean Dealmaker. And I am pleased to make your acquaintance. But we should all steer clear of the green-eyed monster. As Lewis Carroll so trenchantly said: “Beware the Jujub bird and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!”

What’s the difference between an econo-blogger lying dead in the road, and the dead roadkill skunk a few miles further on?

There are skidmarks in front of the dead skunk.

Q: What do you call 10,000 [fill in your favorite hated profession here] chained together at the bottom of the sea?

A: A good start.

I think this could be a good source of secondary income for you, Baruch. Think about it.

Anyway I can’t complain, I started it with my brains joke. And certainly one way I am like Taleb is I like the attention. As long I’m somehow the centre of it all I’m happy.

Do you really think I am “trenchant”?

Feel free to share more economist jokes, by the way. Not the can opener one, though, everyone knows that one.