Greenspan, the Black Swan and the Rest of Us

I had a colleague, Bruce Horwitz contact me about Greenspan’s testimony in front of Congress last Friday, described here. Bruce and I had a good conversation earlier this year about The Black Swan. The author of the book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, has been appearing a lot on television in the past month.

Bruce thought that this was a great example of a “black swan” event, that is, when people are totally surprised by an event. At first, I disagreed. As a former banker, I have memories of the analysis that used to be done on our portfolios Read more