20 Aug 2009

Cameronite guru Nassim Taleb answers your questions

“David Cameron is the best thing we have left on this planet…the only hope left for a risk-conscious society,” was one of the more unexpected answers I got from Nassim Taleb.

I was interviewing the Black Swan author for a report we are doing next week. But as a teaser I put a series of questions from my Twitter followers.
 
The connection with Cameron has caused some controversy in the press. I know that Nouriel Roubini, the other thickly-accented predictor of economic doom, has met with Gordon Brown and the Treasury on the odd occasion.

It is highly intriguing that the Conservatives have allowed Taleb to be depicted as a Cameronite guru.

 
There is a strain of Tory thinking, which is probably close to the Austrian school of economics and Hayek, which is anti-debt, and comfortable with the cleansing powers of creative destruction, that are unleashed by a recession.

You can see glimpses of it in George Osborne’s musings on the need for smaller banks, suggesting that the state is supporting big banks too much.

The shadow chancellor has also been talking about making the transition from an economy built on excessive debt to one built on savings and investment.

This strain of Toryism is not entirely coherent with extreme deregulatory free marketeering, particularly in relation to the financial system.

But in his answers to your Twitter questions, Taleb seems totally in tune with this Tory philosophical balancing act.
 
On climate change, he got into some trouble with the press. I think this might be a case of his ideas being a little too complex than is digestible by our Fleet Street friends.

He is not a carbon junkie at all but he believes that it is irrelevant whether or not climate change is man-made or made by something else.

He is against depending on complex scientific-economic probability models as the basis upon which to decide whether to take action against climate change. He thinks we should take that action anyway.
 
Taleb also answers your questions on President Obama, and on banker bonuses “you can’t let bankers get away with this”.

Let us know what you think of his answers below, and we’ll start doing this more often.