Black Swan guru slams Paulson, Bernanke and Obama

Posted Aug 12th 2009 2:20PM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: Financial Crisis

In appearance on CNBC, Black Swan author Nassim Taleb slammed the U.S. government's handling of the financial crisis and argued that none of the systemic problems in the system had been fixed.

"When you have cancer, sometimes it hurts to remove the tumor," he said. "They're not removing the tumor."

"It is a matter of risk and responsibility, and I think the risks that were there before, these problems are still there," he said. "We still have a very high level of debt, we still have leadership that's literally incompetent ..."

Should Obama reappoint Ben Bernanke? Taleb doesn't think so. "Bernanke belongs to a school of economics that is not in synch with the complex system. By having Bernanke there you're rewarding failure."

Meanwhile, three-fourths of investors surveyed recently said that Bernanke has earned another term, but that plays right into Taleb's arguments: by instituting policies that prop up markets, Bernanke has pleased market participants without really having fixed anything long-term.

Check out the video below to watch the whole interview.

Tags: Bernanke, financial crisis, inthenews, Obama, Taleb