Wednesday, February 08, 2017

A bit nutty, Jason

Jason Soon keeps noting things said by Nassim Taleb, including re-tweeting extracts of an interview with him that have appeared at Zerohedge.

As far as I can tell, he has a general reputation of being a bit of a loudmouth quasi-contrarian, but with some basic credibility behind him.   He seems, for example, to be on the right side of climate change, arguing that the potential for disastrous temperature rise really means that action should be taken, and those to the contrary bear the burden of proving their do-nothing position.

And on economics, I have the feeling he might be more or less right (if you ignore the personal sledging of Obama) that the economic problems are not really solved:  
Oh, absolutely! The last crisis [2008] hasn’t ended yet because they just delayed it. [Barack] Obama is an actor. He looks good, he raises good children, he is respectable. But he didn’t fix the economic system, he put novocaine [local anaesthetic] in the system. He delayed the problem by working with the bankers whom he should have prosecuted. And now we have double the deficit, adjusted for GDP, to create six million jobs, with a massive debt and the system isn’t cured. We retained zero interest rates, and that hasn’t helped. Basically we shifted the problem from the private corporates to the government in the U.S. So, the system remains very fragile.
So, he worries about "massive debt".   But things start looking wonky in the second part, when he is asked how the Trump administration can address this:
Of course. The whole mandate he got was because he understood the economic problems. People don’t realise that Obama created inequalities when he distorted the system. You can only get rich if you have assets. What Trump is doing is put some kind of business sense in the system. You don’t have to be a genius to see what’s wrong. Instead of Trump being elected, if you went to the local souk [bazaar] in Aleppo and brought one of the retail shop owners, he would do the same thing Trump is doing. Like making a call to Boeing and asking why are we paying so much.
OK, he's stop making any sense. So, Taleb is giving Trump for being a non-expert who talks at a level people can understand.   The problem is - he's ignoring Trump's actual, and plain to see, ignorance on a swathe of economic and other problems, and on those matters where you can tell his general direction, Trump's approach (lower taxes, big infrastructure spend, Mexican wall, the EPA) is only going to make  matters Taleb complains about ("massive debt", climate change) worse.  Not to mention that the path Trump is taking is to decrease banking regulation - no sense of a banker punishment there;  quite the opposite.

As for Trump putting "business sense" into the system - Trump proudly pays no tax and brags about using debt to his advantage, and the string of litigation against his business conduct is embarrassing.

So yeah, sorry, but I have trouble taking Taleb seriously. 

19 comments:

not trampis said...

Soony likes a lot of hacks. He thought highly of Robert Carling who absurdly co-wrote a piece in the AFR extolling expansionary austerity which was demolished by Daniel Leigh and others at the worlds Bank. what made it worse was that Carling did not even know of the criticisms!

In other words he was a Davidson on fiscal policy.

He also thinks Bernadi efforts could be interesting when it is obvious it merely helps the ALP

Jason Soon said...

"He also thinks Bernadi efforts could be interesting when it is obvious it merely helps the ALP"

You are a cretin, Homer. when I say 'interesting' I mean 'sit down and munch popcorn' interesting. that post wasn't an endorsement of anything

Jason Soon said...

btw steve I fail to see the personal as opposed to political sledging of Obama. Taleb's basic point is that people like Obama because he's a completely clean, as far as we know incorruptible, very nice guy who embodies the kind of good family values the Republicans purportedly support. but this personal appeal has wrongly given his political achievements an unjustified sheen. he's made that point before, hence his point that the position of President isn't the position of Archbishop. He's said nothing but nice things about Obama personally (which are justified) but reiterated that this doesn't make him a great President

not trampis said...

so oh great intellectual you approve of something which will improve the ALP's chances.

I guess it is becasue you are a tweet you cannot elaborate on anything anymore

Jason Soon said...

"so oh great intellectual you approve of something which will improve the ALP's chances."

???
why do you think I care which of the two mediocre major parties have a lead on the other?

you are nuttier than a fruit and nut bar, Homer Paxton

Steve said...

OK, Jason, I take your comment on board, and "sledging" might not quite have been the right way of putting it.

Your comment, however, doesn't respond to my main point - Taleb's unjustifiable optimism that Trump has a clue economically, or that his mooted policies are likely to do anything other than make things Taleb worries about worse.

Jason Soon said...

I think he's just being politically astute and hoping he can steer Trump in the right direction if he gets asked for advice, which is more likely if he is seen as taking a wait and see approach

not trampis said...

Soony you are as articulate as commenters on Catallaxy Being a Trumpkin you would really fit in. your vast knowledge of macroeconomics would fit in wonderfully well!

Trump is a proven failure and a complete idiot as can be seen by his immigration order which had NO evidence to support it. Soony doesn't worry about evidence these days.

Trumkpins are indeed nuttier than a fruit bar!

you like scoring plenty of own goals

Anonymous said...

Hey Stepford, every third thread is about Jason. Dude, no one cares anymore if you come out of the closet. Demonstrate some gay pride, step.

Anonymous said...

By the way Step, I know it's difficult, as you only have three commenters here and getting rid of Paxton would cut the chatter down by a 1/3. But dude you have to get rid of the idiot as he's too dense to be here. Paxton, go away for lord's sake.

Steve said...

Very droll, JC. There's more to learn from Jason's twitter feed than there is from the thousands of daily verbiage from Catallaxy. (Even if use of twitter has the frustrating aspect that you never really know how much of a retweet is being endorsed.)

Steve said...

By the way, I did learn something from Philippa in the open thread today - she has been caught up in a Church investigation about a priest having an affair with a woman, and seems to think that after the child abuse issue is finished, the Church has to look hard at the whole issue of priests having affairs with adults. The child abuse issue is "the tip of the iceberg" I think she says...

Yet (far as I can tell) she insists that celibacy isn't really the problem!

Be a good chap and tell her that a sensible path towards reducing priests having sex outside of the rules is to change the rules so they can have sex?

John said...

I don't know why but when Jason gave up control of The Cat it went downhill. So many things could be discussed at The Cat. Yes it was heated but diversity of opinions could still be aired and many subjects were addressed. I have noted that many of the regular commentators from that period slowly drifted away.

Anonymous said...

I agree John. The cat has gone down hill with the commenters. To use a Birdie expression,there are some seriously hardcore cases there but it's filled with dim bulbs.. For others its a lonely hearts club now. There used to be excellent discussions. Now it's all anti-muzzo and protectionism. Don't get me wrong, I have no love for towel heads and would love to see Saudi- Arabia turned into a glass museum. But how much can one take?

I had one moron suggest to me the other week that them Rothschilds financed WW2. Not WW1, but WW2.

Paul Montgomery said...

Alright Steve, against my better judgement, I will now follow Soon on the tweets. I expect to be disappointed.

Steve said...

That seems a bit unnecessarily snarky, monty. Actually, he doesn't tweet all that much, and I disagree with the sentiment quite often, but yes I learn some stuff. Besides, he tweets my posts, occasionally! If you want someone you'd agree with 99% of the time, you should follow Peter Whiteford if u don't already.

Anonymous said...

Fatboy's here now. Wow.

In case anyone's missed missed, this is fatboy on the links. Just have a look at the attire.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/91779052@N00/4459193302/in/photostream/lightbox/

Jason Soon said...

hey steve
a book launch you shouldn't miss http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2017/02/making-australia-right/

Steve said...

It'll sell in the hundreds...