Markets, Complexity, Greenspan, Taleb ...

• House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform (Waxman)
  • Hearing: "The Financial Crisis and the Role of Federal Regulators" (prelim transcript [.pdf])
    • Alan Greenspan, former FRB Chairman
    • John W. Snow, former Treasury Secretary
    • Christopher Cox, SEC Chairman

• PBS News Hour
  
  • Shields & Brooks, October 24, 2008

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of money, another subject, David. Alan Greenspan's testimony (.pdf) this day before yesterday before Congress, what did you think of that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, first of all, I admired him for saying that. We often are in a political culture where nobody admits a mistake, and he admitted a mistake. And the question is, why? What did he get wrong about the economy?

And I think what he got wrong is -- Paul Solman had a guy named Nassim Taleb on the show not long ago who got it right, who picked Fannie Mae, who talked about the banking collapse.

And the difference between the two worldviews is Greenspan relied on quantitative models of risk analysis, where Taleb is the product of behavioral economics, which talks about the psychology of perception and the perception of risks, and the biases we make in assuming the future will be basically like the past, and the way we look for evidence that confirms our prejudices.

And if you looked at the risk analysis through the frailty of human perception, as Taleb did, you can say this risk was out of control. People did not understand what was happening.
And all these bogus economic models that the quantifying people believed in just were bogus. And I think that's the two mental frameworks that allowed some people to understand what was going to happen and so many, so many experts not get it.

. . .. ... .. . .

Henry Farrell & Dan Drezner
bh.tv 10.29.2008


& 4.22.2010 C&L