What 'unexpected' everyone is talking about? Everyone has been pointing at US imbalances like low saving rate leading to dangerous dependence on consumption for growth (and consumers in turn depending on low rates to borrow) for 5 years at least.

What's unexpected is that it took so long to unravel.

<3 Taleb. What's surprising is that people are surprised by this latest crash. Banks, throughout history, have never made money.

I worked in credit structuring for Deutsche Bank and saw first hand the manipulation of credit ratings to engineer 'profit'.

http://www.kulveer.co.uk/2007/09/credit-crunch/

You should have opened a hedge fund strictly based on shorting those banks.

Read Taleb's book, "The Black Swan." Very timely these days.

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp...

Listen to this talk he gave at the Long Now: http://s3.amazonaws.com/salt-recordings/salt-020080208-taleb...

Honestly, Black Swan is not Taleb's best book. I would recommend you read Fooled By Randomness first if you have the chance...

http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Market...

In the above talk, he mentions that Black Swan is better than Fooled by Randomness.

Both are good and help give you some perspective on stepping back and looking at the big picture.

I grabbed this book to read on the flight to Dublin (from Seattle). It's a good read; humorous, but informative.

As you might guess, this is one of my favorite books! One of the things I find so fascinating is how, as in Fooled By Randomness, the concepts he outlines are readily applicable to so many spheres of activity in the modern world. There are black swans happening and about to happen in every field where modern technology has accelerated communication and is changing the way things are done.

"igon value"? Surprised the editors didn't catch that..

I saw that and thought, " . . . I better not mention it or everyone will think you are a mathematician . . ."

Thank you, sir, for being willing to take that virtual wedgie for all of the math geeks out there!

Eigen value is probably not in their spellcheck dictionary.

No; Gladwell just doesn't think about what he writes....