Nassim Taleb says "The Federal Reserve Will Be Gone In 25 Years," Ridicules Geithner Publicly And Accuses Krugman Of 'Stealing Assets From Your Grandchildren' (VIDEO)

Originally published in October 2010.

Runs 1 minute.  The focus of this first video is Paul Krugman.

• Update:  Taleb said today that investors should sue the Nobel Prize for creating the financial crisis (Bloomberg)

We love how Taleb gets personal with his attacks.  It's obvious that he does not like Geithner, Bernanke and Krugman.  Just last week he told Reuters that he walked out of a meeting with Geithner and wouldn't shake his hand.

A little context -- this was recorded last Friday at the Washington Ideas Forum.  The humor is that the previous speaker, on the same stage and to the same audience, was Tim Geithner, spreading TARP bailout propaganda and lies.  Geithner finishes, and out walks Taleb who says squarely -- I'm paraphrasing:

• "Don't listen to Geithner.  He's a corrupt, failed regulator."

Beautiful.

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Source:  Huffington Post

Deficits "will break the Fed" and it will be replaced, he predicted.

• "The Romans had a saying," Taleb added: "The grandchildren should not bear the debt of the grandparents."

That debt is made more dangerous, Taleb said, by the increasingly complexities of the financial system, a problem that he said has not been ameliorated during the last three years. "Debt and complexity are not friends," he said, because "complexity causes unpredictability," and heavy debt burdens mean one false move, whether by an individual actor or a system, could spell disaster.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, a popular columnist for The New York Times, "doesn't understand" the economic situation the U.S. finds itself in, Taleb claimed, nor do most economists.

Because of the significant rise in debt, within 25 years "anything fragile will break," Taleb said. That includes the Fed, he argued, because the Fed "fragilized this country."

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Taleb says the Fed will eventually fail...

This is the full discussion, inlcuding Geithner, FED and other comments.

Source:  The Atlantic

Taleb explained his simple metric for judging whose economic opinions are worth his time:

• "Did someone predict the crisis before it happened? ... If the answer is no, I don't want to hear what the person says. If the person saw the crisis coming, then I want to hear what they have to say."

• "You have a million people on this planet who call themselves economists," Taleb said. "How many people understood the risks of the system [before the crisis]? ... Paul Krugman was not one of them."

Taleb took issue with Krugman's support of deficit spending.

• "This transformation of private debt, with all the moral hazard it entails, into public debt is, number one, from a risk standpoint, bad," he said.  "And from an ethical standpoint, I find it immoral.  The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents."

Asked where the economy would be in 25 years, Taleb gave the vague response that:

• "...everything fragile will break."  Oh, and that the Fed won't exist anymore.  It will be replaced by something "I think more organic and that makes more sense."

Further reading...

Taleb Says He Wouldn't Shake Geithner's Hand, Calls Bernanke "A True Charlatan," Blames Nobel Prize For Rewarding Bad Economists

Transparency at the FED -- Bailout Farce

WHAT WOULD KRUGMAN SAY ABOUT THIS?

Geithner: "I Never Had A Real Job"

Slideshow - Time Magazine Looks Inside the Private Offices of Fed Chairman Bernanke

Comments

[DailyBail]

The Labor Department announced Friday that the U.S. economy lost 95,000 nonfarm jobs in September, higher than the 8,000 loss anticipated by Wall Street economists. Jobs growth was underwhelming as well, with private-sector nonfarm employment expanding by 65,000 in September, as opposed to an expected 85,000.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-07/jeffrey-sachs-how-to-escape-our-economic-problems/?cid=hp:mainpromo6

[DailyBail]

How mortgage default could get much worse

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/06/08/how-mortgage-default-could-get-much-worse/

[DailyBail]

Why I Despise Krugman

http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-i-hate-krugman.html

I really do despise Krugman—not because I disagree with him: I despise him because I get the vibe that he wants the US to get involved in a war, just like WWII, just so that the economy improves.

Getting involved in a war for economic gain is immoral—it’s no different than killing someone for money. THAT is why I despise Krugman.

[DailyBail]

Why Paul Krugman Is An Imbecile—or a Fraud

http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-paul-krugman-is-imbecileor-fraud.html

[DailyBail]

Federal Reserve 'Will Be Gone' In 25 Years, Top Financial Mind Predicts, Despite Geithner's Vote Of Confidence

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/30/nassim-taleb-federal-reserve-will-be-gone_n_746109.html?ir=Politics

[DailyBail]

http://www.europac.net/commentaries/hail_mary

Peter Schiff...

The FED is about to throw their Hail Mary pass...

[DailyBail]

We Now Have A De Facto Moratorium On Foreclosures, As Citi And Wells Are Set To Freeze

http://twitter.com/CGasparino/statuses/26778437951

[DailyBail]

Not quite Paul. It’s not Wall Street banks that control the FED. They are in collusion with the FED, but the FED has the real power. The PRIME MOVER of the beginning of the current Depression was Alan Greenspan’s interest rate policy–or to put it another way, “destroying the savings rate” of the world’s reserve currency, and turning it into a global vehicle for finance capitalism speculation. And I use the term “finance capitalism” loosely because it is so far removed from true capitalism that it has made “capitalism” the dirty word of the current progressive, socialist movement.

The follow up to “Sir Alan” was “Benny the Bubble” and between the two we now have Great Depression II.

http://letthemfail.us/archives/5864

[DailyBail]

The Fed is dead, maybe by 2012

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-fed-is-dead-maybe-by-2012-2010-10-05

[Panskeptic]

Taleb is a jealous prima donna who despises everybody else but himself. If he had a column in the NY Times several times a week and a Nobel Prize, he'd still consider himself the only smart guy in the room. But oddly enough, he has neither.

Say, where were all these deficit hawks when Reagan tripled the deficit and Bush Sr. made it a quadruple? Clinton got things down to a near surplus and then Bush Jr. ballooned it all over again. Where were you guys? Or do you save your outrage only for Democratic administrations?

And for someone who supposedly doesn't understand, Krugman describes the current massive Republican hysteria and hypocrisy more accurately than anyone else in the business.

[j r]

It ain't gonna take no f**ing 25 years.

[h garner]

How can this Taleb guy even be quoted....."The Fed will be gone in 25 yrs".......forsooth! We are toast and no-one seems to want to withdraw his head from the sand.

[Benny and the Talibanks]

That's 24 years, 364 days too late.