Nassim Taleb Says World Is More Fragile Today Than in 2007

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, scientific advisor at Universa Investments, discusses the factors causing global fragility, hidden liabilities in global markets, and what he sees as safe trades in the current market.

Nassim Taleb spent 20 years as a derivatives trader and, after closing 650,000 option transactions and examining 200,000 risk reports, he changed careers in 2006 to become a scholar and philosophical essayist. Taleb is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's Polytechnic Institute, but he self-funds his research and operates in the manner of independent scholars. He is the author of four novels, most notably The Black Swan and Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Taleb's works focuses on decision making under opacity, as well as mathematical and philosophical problems with probability, in other words on "what to do in a world we don't understand" as well as on the properties of systems that can handle disorder.