Nassim Taleb & Benoit Mandelbrot Speak Regarding The State Of Markets

I have added quite a few different links to the blog over the last year. Mostly with regards to news sources that I believe represent fair value or better. I don't play the link game - you add my link to your blog and I'll add you to mine. I participate in enough popularity contests in the game of life. One of the links I added was public television or PBS, which is a last bastion of truth seeking in a corporate owned media.

If you have a strong stomach and don't have trouble sleeping at night, I would recommend you listen to this new PBS interview with Nassim Taleb and Benoit Mandelbrot. Taleb has been a staunch critic of Frankenstein finance and he wrote a few books recently criticizing the new math used by Wall Street. What really perturbed me was when a well known financial advisor wrote a commentary a few years ago interpreting one of Taleb's concerns. That commentary included remarks that rare events cannot be anticipated and therefore one should just hold their nose with an investment strategy and pray you have something left coming out the other end. More commonly called buy-and-hold investing. A self-serving and clearly deceitful position.

Mandelbrot is unequivocally one of the most brilliant minds on earth as it pertains to the concerns over the state of global markets. In other words, what these two gentlemen have to say should be considered with great respect. The general line of thinking with their remarks is why I posted my Disaster remarks before the market started its cascading collapse. People toying with this market don't know what they don't know. More aptly put, ignorance is bliss. Or, a fool and his money soon part ways.

Click on the picture above to be taken to the PBS video page. The video can be watched by clicking in the link at the center of the page titled "Streaming Video".