Uma citação arrepiante, uma revista notável.

Escrito em 2006, este texto arrepia pela premonição. Pode ser encontrado na edição 260 da Edge, revista online que publica o estado da arte do pensamento contemporâneo.

NOTABLE QUOTE “Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.“ — Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan (2006)

A não perder, neste número da Edge, e nos próximos, um projecto especial da revista. Uma ‘Master Class’ onde Richard Thaler, Daniel Kahneman e Sendhil Mullainathan reuniram os seguintes participantes: Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon.com; John Brockman, Edge Foundation, Inc.; Max Brockman, Brockman, Inc.; George Dyson, Science Historian; Author, Darwin Among the Machines; W. Daniel Hillis, Computer Scientist; Cofounder, Applied Minds; Author, The Pattern on the Stone; Daniel Kahneman, Psychologist; Nobel Laureate, Princeton University; Salar Kamangar, Google; France LeClerc, Marketing Professor; Katinka Matson, Edge Foundation, Inc.; Sendhil Mullainathan, Professor of Economics, Harvard University; Executive Director, Ideas 42, Institute of Quantitative Social Science; Elon Musk, Physicist; Founder, Tesla Motors, SpaceX; Nathan Myhrvold, Physicist; Founder, Intellectual Venture, LLC; Event Photographer; Sean Parker, The Founders Fund; Cofounder: Napster, Plaxo, Facebook; Paul Romer, Economist, Stanford; Richard Thaler, Behavioral Economist, Director of the Center for Decision Research, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business; coauthor of Nudge; Anne Treisman, Psychologist, Princeton University; Evan Williams, Founder, Blogger, Twitter.

Como diz a revista, «These are the people that are rewriting our global culture»

Tema: A Short Course in Behavioral Economics. Realizado nos finais de Julho, demonstra como os mercados financeiros criaram sistemas altamente complexos para gerar riqueza a partir do comportamento (psicologia) dos consumidores. Ainda a procissão ia no adro.

...I shiver at the thought!