I agree. Even black swan wasn’t that bad after the first 3 chapters or so. For whatever reason I started it on ch 4 or 5 then went back to the earlier chapters. He was such a pompous ass in those chapters that I can see how people would be turned off by the rest of the book – which I found facinating.

Your commenting is evidence enough of the though-provocation caused by this post. That’s orders of magnitude more than you will get reading your Econ textbook.

Btw, shiller is often right b/c shiller recognizes the behavioral element of economics. Classical economists dismiss that outright as it doesn’t fit into the models that taleb so disdainfully refers to.

There are smart economists who regularly get it right (think Krugan, Shiller, CR, Roubini (as much as I abhor this last man because of his colossal ego) and dumb or partisan ones who get it wrong.

But to say all economists are the equivalent of dice-rollers because sometimes some get things wrong or sometimes theories fail to capture the whole picture…

Hello???

This post is not worthy of this otherwise superb blog.

Speaking of Ed Yardeni (quoted in the article)– he lobbed forth a miserable forecast last November – i.e. after the credit crunch was well under way – as he had the s&p earning $111 during 2008 ("high single digit" growth).

Fast-forward to today, the WSJ points out that S&P profits fell 17.9% yoy for a run-rate of about $80-85.

Keep adjusting those predictions, Ed.

—But not in this remark. There are many and complex things I could say about astrology, but it’s complete lack of consistent accuracy has been demonstrated countless times. Economists are often wrong, and their system is faulty even if some of their tools are genuinely useful. But they will come out ahead of astrologers in any performance face off: The comment is ditzy ‘look at me’ stuff. Taleb has his day in the sun, and it has made his hat size swell markedly. When he gets himself back under control, he may well have further useful things to say.

I think that would actually be Wall Street at its most accurate. The regulatory standards are a lot laxer for quarterly reports than the big annual reports. Companies take full advantage of this, building up suspiciously good track records of beating forecasts. It’s a given we’ll be presented with more accurate (and less upbeat) numbers when we get the annual earnings.

It was good enough for Nancy Reagan, we ran the whole freaking country on astrology! And look what great and wondrous things RR accomplished!