Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Author
The Black Swan

Nassim N. Taleb, known for predicting the current crisis, is combination of a literary essayist, scholar of randomness, writer of philosophical tales, and former derivatives trader. He is known for a multidisciplinary approach to the role of the high-impact rare event -across psychology, social science, philosophy, finance, engineering, and history.

His books have more than 2.5 million copies in print. His work has been translated into 31 languages. Taleb holds the title of Distinguished Professor in Risk Engineering at New York University. Taleb is currently principal of Universa Investments L.P..

Taleb has an MBA from Wharton and a PhD from the University of Paris.

A quote from "The Black Swan:
The Impact of the Highly Improbable"

"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.