I am going to tell you a dirty little secret: I know why many of you are so angry about the financial crisis. Yes, losing a job or seeing one's investment portfolio depleted are certainly ugly outcomes. Having to endure endless hours of depressing TV coverage of the malaise is...

You don't need to be a die-hard Michelle Malkin fan to wonder what exactly President Obama has done to earn the Nobel Peace Prize. Such doubting would not need to negate Obama's capacity for peace-promoting and desire for a more peaceful world. I am sure that the President both wishes...

I recently read a business journalist lament in puzzlement that business schools have reformed themselves much less than would be required in light of the mayhem caused by the credit crisis. Such lack of atoning action is certainly puzzling. B-schools have repeatedly been taken to task, and even blamed for...

Let's say you want to become a porn star. After several years of holding more standard jobs, you decide to make a career switch in search of excitement, fame, and more interesting work colleagues. Since you lack experience in the industry, you begin looking for sex schools that can hopefully...

These days, almost everybody considers themselves to be victims of bankers. But let's not forget that many bankers have too suffered greatly from this banking-originating crisis. In essence, a (large) group of bankers has been mauled by the mayhem-igniting actions of another (small) group of bankers.

An aspect from...

Last Thursday several men and women assembled in a sober Washington, DC room to discuss one of the key issues (if not the key issue) behind the terrible economic and financial crisis that has caused so much misery. Among the gatherees were top politicians and top financial pros. A world-renowned...

This Thursday September the 10th marks a historic development for both Washington and the financial markets. The US Congress' Committee on Science and Technology will hold a hearing on the responsibility of mathematical model Value at Risk for the credit crisis. As HuffPost readers know full well, I have long...

As has been widely reported, Britain´s leading conservative politician David Cameron recently shared a podium with iconoclastic bestselling author Nassim Taleb. The composer of "The Black Swan" used the occasion to say certain things that instantly and rabidly captured the headlines, prompting some pundits to loudly wonder whether Taleb is...

The punditry and the world at large have been hard at work trying to find ex-ante predictors for the malaise that has engulfed our markets, our economies, and our societies. Desperate efforts to find those who "called it" have been relentlessly launched. We all seem to want to know who...

Most of us hate uncertainty. We thirst for numerical guiding lights, we demand precise diagnosis. We con ourselves into believing that someone, somewhere, must have the answers, down to the third decimal. And yet, in embracing quantification, we may be sowing the seeds of untold malaise. The numerical sheep can...

As is well known, one of the consequences of the economic and financial malaise that has engulfed the world for the past couple of years has been a very substantial increase in the number of applications to MBA programs. B-school has traditionally been a safe haven for those unlucky enough...

And Rush Limbaugh loves Obama. And Pamela Anderson needs breast implants. And New Yorkers root for the Red Sox. What a bunch of silly notions, right? I have another big silly notion for ya: the investment banking industry is dead and will never regain its golden clout of old. Silly,...

Everyone and their brother know that we are immersed in a variety of, familiarly-named, crises: the credit crisis, the mortgage crisis, the subprime crisis, the banking crisis, the derivatives crisis, the ratings crisis, the capitalism crisis, the hedge fund crisis, the regulation crisis, the bonus crisis. But, quite possibly unbeknownst...

Prominent commentators have proposed that the solution to our current economic and financial predicaments lies in going through a huge debt-for-equity swap whereby creditors become equityholders and debtors are thus relieved of their (mostly, unmeetable) obligations. Cleanse the system from debt, the thinking goes, and all will go well. Would...

Nassim Taleb, the famed author and iconoclast, explains in the foreword to my new book how he spent nearly two decades trading a type of complicated financial product known as exotic options, on underlyings such as stock prices, interest rates, currencies, or commodities. In fact, he was there right at...

What if I told you that the true culprit behind the credit crisis was a mathematical device known as Value at Risk (or just VaR)? And what if I told you that said tool has been promoted, embraced, and enforced by financial regulators for more than a decade? That such...

The financial and economic crisis that we continue to endure and suffer holds, certainly, many lessons for the future. Some of them are obviously specific: don't finance the purchase of an $800,000 home by an asset-less borrower making $15,000 a year; don't trust the rating agencies; beware of credit derivatives....

Rivers of ink have been spilled blaming MBA graduates for the credit crisis. We are tired of reading how many of the disgraced bank executives that presided the institutions which dumb, ill-fated punts sank the world were endowed with the formerly-glorious degree. We are once more relentlessly reminded that Enron...