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Benno Hansen

How the Nobel prize may have sparked the credit crisis - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article1735150

Nobel Prize economics Nassim Nicholas Taleb

shared by Benno Hansen on 03 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Benno Hansen on 03 Oct 10
     
    Taleb is attacking the equivocation of the Nobel prizes in his books. This article attacks Taleb for attacking winners of the lesser Nobel prize, the one reserved for dubious economists. The ignorance of journalists, the irony, the... whatever.
Benno Hansen

Free market has turned us into 'Matrix' drones - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...nto-matrix-drones-2064799.html

market economy

shared by Benno Hansen on 01 Sep 10 - Cached
  • A leading economist has likened the nation's acceptance of free-market capitalism to that of the brainwashed characters in the film The Matrix, unwitting pawns in a fake reality.
  • aims to disprove what he sees as economic myths, including the idea that people are paid what they are worth, that the "trickle down" effect of increasing wealth among the rich helps the poor, and that education makes countries more prosperous.
  • "Another myth that needs to be busted is the idea that we can discuss economics without any moral implications,"
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • free-market capitalism has left the global economy more unstable
  • "In conventional economic theory, it is thought that we are born as perfectly formed, rational, self-serving agents. But where you work and what kind of work you do are important in determining your character."
  • the effects of not having equality of outcome are felt by the next generation
Benno Hansen

The 15 most persuasive explanations for the economic crisis. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slat... - 0 views

www.slate.com/...all

economy finance economics risk management

shared by Benno Hansen on 18 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Liberal analysts, by contrast, are more likely to focus on the way Greenspan's aversion to regulation transformed pell-mell innovation in financial products and excessive bank leverage into lethal phenomena.
  • Paul Krugman, who noted in one interview: "Regulation didn't keep up with the system."
  • excessive reliance on mathematical models like the VAR and the dread Gaussian copula function, which led to the underpricing of unpredictable forms of risk
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • "Financial innovation + inadequate regulation = recipe for disaster is also the favored explanation of Greenspan's successor, Ben Bernanke
  • fallacies of free-market fundamentalists
  • after the West won the Cold War, capitalism could go naked
  • globalization spread the toxicity from one country's mortgage market to the rest of the world
  • the free market itself is to blame for the recent troubles
  • most libertarians and Wall Street Journal editorial page contributors continue to insist that government caused the whole ordeal
  • the economy fell prey to recurring delusions about risk and bubbles
  • Conservative economists—ever worried about inflation—tend to fault Greenspan for keeping interest rates too low between 2003 and 2005 as the real estate and credit bubbles inflated.
Benno Hansen

Blame Nobel for crisis, says author of Black Swan | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSTRE68R2SK20100928

Nassim Nicholas Taleb economy economics risk management nobel

shared by Benno Hansen on 03 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • "I want to remove the harm from these economic models. And the Nobel is not helping. They should be held partly responsible, if not largely responsible, for the crisis,
  • a list of Nobel prize winners who make his blood boil. They include: Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Robert Merton, Myron Scholes, Robert Engle, Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller
  • Forecasting methods, which he discusses in detail in his book, create a false sense of security or, worse, send people in the wrong direction. Universities then compound the problem by teaching these Nobel-approved ideas as orthodoxy.
Benno Hansen

Carbon pricing is planetary Russian Roulette - The Ecologist - 0 views

www.theecologist.org/...lanetary_russian_roulette.html

carbon Nassim Nicholas Taleb economy black swan risk risk management

shared by Benno Hansen on 28 Nov 09 - Cached
  • How do you price the tonne of carbon that, once burned, tips the balance and triggers catastrophic, irreversible global warming?This question is phrased to give scope for only one answer: there is no price and therefore carbon markets are pointless.
  • how effective is pricing in carbon markets?
  • There is no mechanism for pricing in this situation because the outcomes are so asymmetrical: extinction or cash.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • prices are almost always imperfect for a number of reasons, ranging from lack of information to ignoring costs such as pollution
  • The theory of unintended consequences states simply that whatever we do in a complex system will have a range of consequences we did not intend and could not forecast because of our lack of knowledge.
  • the most important events in the future are the largest events and these we cannot forecast.
  • it would be stupid to discard carbon markets provided they are considered as only one innovation amongst many other areas which require innovation including education, law, business, technology etc.
Benno Hansen

FT.com / World - Class of '83 author recalls 'likeable' guy - 0 views

www.ft.com/...04-11de-a7ec-00144feab49a.html

economy Nassim Nicholas Taleb black swan economics risk

shared by Benno Hansen on 25 Oct 09 - Cached
  • The insider trading scandal is potentially embarrassing for Wharton, whose MBA degree is ranked the best in the world by the Financial Times. Business schools have been squirming recently as the financial crisis thrust some of their alumni into the unforgiving gaze of an angry public.
Benno Hansen

Why capitalism fails - The Boston Globe - 0 views

www.boston.com/...why_capitalism_fails

Hyman Minsky capitalism finance economy economics

shared by Benno Hansen on 24 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Benno Hansen on 24 Sep 09
     
    Hyman Minsky
Benno Hansen

Praying for a revolution in economics | Alex Andrews | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...onomics-greenspan-neoclassical

shared by Benno Hansen on 15 Jul 09 - Cached
  • the character of neoliberal economics is essentially religious
  • neoclassical economics appears scientific. This is because it deploys huge quantities of complex mathematics, giving it the veneer of being what it has long hoped to be, a kind of social physics.
    • Benno Hansen
      Benno Hansen on 15 Jul 09
       
      APPEARS scientific isn't
  • Neoclassical economics looks like physics because the equations were those of physics. Its history is a history of problematic borrowings from the natural sciences, leading to a mathematical sophistication increasingly divorced from reality.
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  • Equations prove free markets work, but only in a sterile world of mathematical abstraction that relies on ridiculous assumptions such as perfectly competitive markets.
  • Once economics loses its status as science, its religious aspects become more obvious.
  • neoliberalism as practised by Greenspan and his ilk as making capitalism a religion, the market a god and economics a form of theology
  • free markets needed their own Richard Dawkins
Benno Hansen

Fresh From Davos: Taleb and Roubini Summarize Their Warnings -- Seeking Alpha - 0 views

seekingalpha.com/...ubini-summarize-their-warnings

shared by Benno Hansen on 17 May 09 - Cached
  • The same people who did not see the financial crisis coming are still in charge.
  • The financial system needs to be more robust against "black swans." This will require living with less debt.
  • We need to eliminate the socialization of risk, privatization of profits.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • We should get out of the mentality that we need to build debt on top of housing to drive the economy.
  • We need to invest in real (productive) physical and human capital
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