One: Predicted the 2000 crash: My forecasting track record speaks for itself. Back on March 20, 2000, my column headline read: “Next crash? Sorry, you’ll never hear it coming.” Bingo: The dot-com bubble popped at 11,722. The economy collapsed. A 30-month recession. Markets lost $8 trillion cap. Today the market is still below that 2000 peak. Factor in inflation and Wall Street’s “too-greedy-too-fail” banks have lost about 30% of your retirement nesteggs in this decade. Incompetent? Clueless? No, Wall Street is a bunch of crooks without consciences.

Two: Predicted the 2008 meltdown: Since 2000 my columns covered many warnings of major debt accumulations, market meltdowns, and the psychological failings of Wall Street’s greedy, myopic brains. In June 2008, months before Wall Street’s meltdown, we reported on twenty predictions made between 2000 and 2007, twenty warnings of a subprime meltdown coming. Oddly, no one seemed to be listening to all the warnings of leading minds like Buffett, Grantham, Gross, Faber, Shilling, Roubini, Levitt, Fed govenors, and many more. I wondered, was this a repeat of 2000 with “no one listening?” Then … suddenly it hit me: Not “nobody.” Just the opposite: Everyone was listening, everybody knew a crash was coming. Yes, everyone. But we were in a trance. Including Washington’s bosses; Bernanke, Bush, Paulson, Greenspan. They all heard it coming. They knew. So did Wall Street. And Main Street.

Three: Now, predicting the new 2012 collapse … and everyone hears this one too!

Unfortunately America’s collective brain is addicted to the adrenaline rush of gambling in a risky bull. The euphoria’s intoxicating. You’re caught up in a game of musical chairs, squeezing out every last dollar of return, blind to the catastrophe ahead … until it catches you by surprise … unfortunately, Wall Street lacked a moral compass and started stealing trillions from American taxpayers … today, the only lesson Wall Street learned is “greed is good” … now, the beginning of the end has become a moral tragedy that is setting the stage for a implosion of Wall Street, of capitalism and our economy ca. 2012.

Yes, another meltdown’s coming, it’s inevitable. So this time, I’ve decided to do more periodic updates, a watchlist of alerts, warnings and predictions. Like all the updates done the prior  decade, except this cycle, we’re now more aware that few in power will listen, not Wall Street, not Washington, not Corporate America. But you must. Here are some headlines that tell a fascinating story by themselves, an editted montage blast from 28 experts warning of a disaster dead ahead for Wall Street, America and the world. Read fast, “feel” the power of this prediction:

Financial Times … “Second Great Depression … Still Possible.”
The economy’s “spiral is captured in a Titanic metaphor … unsinkable.”

BusinessWeek … “Next bubble could come sooner than you think.”
From Reinhart and Rogoff, “This Time is Different.” But, it never is.

Bloomberg … Citi’s ‘Near Death’ Hoard Signals Lower Profits.
Citi hoarding $244 billion in cash, ‘as if another crisis were on way.’

Wall Street Journal … “Three Decades of Subsidized Risk”
Gasparino’s “The Sellout:” Greed, mismanagement killed financial system.

SeekingAlpha … ‘Crisis Lessons Forgotten in New Speculation.’
We prop up ‘trash stocks’ Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG; learned nothing.

USAToday … “Wall Street Bailouts … Business As Usual”
Warning: ‘Too Big to Fail’ protections guarantee another crash down the road.

Boston Globe… ‘Why Capitalism fails … why it will happen again.” ‘
Economist says American capitalism “contains seeds of own destruction.”

MarketWatch … “Einhorn bets on major currency ‘death spiral’.”
Hedger bet against Lehman. Now against dollar. Says ‘break up too-big-to-fail’ banks.

Forbes … ‘Be Prepared for Worst … repeating Great Depression’
Expect “GD2” says Congressman Ron Paul, author, The Revolution, End The Fed

New Republic … ‘Next Financial Crisis coming; we made it worse.”
Former IMF economist: ‘Bernanke’s soft landing, sowing seeds of next crisis.’

Wall Street Journal … “The Economy is Still at the Brink.”
Moral hazard: No CEOs of failed banks indicted … even paid millions.

BusinessWeek … “What Happens if the Dollar Crashes?”
Trade wars break out, banks collapse. Why, cheap dollars are killing us.

Pimco Investment Outlook … “On the ‘Course’ to a New Normal”
Gross’ ‘New Normal:’ spending, stocks down, savings up, banks riskier.

Economix, New York Times … “Finance Gone Wild”
Simon Johnson: Wall Street’s “pathological” power over Washington.

Vanity Fair … “Wall Street Lays Another Egg.”
Ferguson: ‘Math models ignored history, human nature,’ failed, repeating.

Clusterstock … Warning … “10 Bubbles in the Making”
Fed’s toxic debt; Gold; emerging markets: ETFs; China; securitization; more!

Rolling Stone … “The Great American Bubble Machine”
Taibbi: Goldman’s a giant vampire stealing trillions with ‘gangster economics’

Temasak Hedge … Roubini predicts bubble, hates equities …
Economist sees “bigger bubble than before” as Fed’s wastes taxpayer trillions

CNN/HuffPost … ‘Wall Street Made Mess, Big Bucks on Clean-up’
Michael Lewis says ‘they’re too powerful … we’re in for day of reckoning.’

Vanity Fair … ‘Wall Street’s Toxic Message: Capitalism Failed’
Stiglitz: Wall Street writes self-serving rules, puts global economy at risk.

MarketWatch … “Wasting our chance to fix the banking system“
America’s got a “banking system that’s just a ticking time bomb.”

MotherJones … “Could Cap’n’Trade Cause New Meltdown?”
Yes, and Goldman sees huge profits if this $1 trillion market is created.

Fortune … “We Owe What? The Next Crisis; America’s Debt”
Yes, “chronic deficits are putting America on the path to fiscal collapse”

Time … “America & Its Deficits: Are We Broke Yet?”
Justin Fox, author, Myth of the Rational Market: “We’ll soon find out.”

HuffPost.com … ‘Main Street Jobs? First Kill Wall Street Jobs’
“Looting of America” author: Wall Street got rich destroying Main Street.

The Nation … “Creative Destruction on Wall Street”
Greiner: They treats problem as ‘psychological,’ solved by ‘happy talk.”

Kiplinger’s … New Black Swan Triggers Next Financial Crisis
Money manager Bob Rodriquez: “Next bubble already growing.”

The Atlantic … “Why Wall Street Always Blows It”
Blodget learned hisa lesson, but Street CEOs still clueless, no lessons learned.

Tell us: Do you believe a new crash will hit around 2012? Will it trigger the “Great Depression II?” WWIII? And how big a factor is Wall Street’s greed and lack of morals the cause?

original: MarketWatch 11.09

Worse, we’re back in a new recession. But Washington politicians are smothering in with happy-talk, feeding us doctored feel-good statistics as legendary political historian Kevin Phillips wrote in “Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know.” So we blindly refuse to bite-the-bullet and stop our out-of-control spiral into collapse. America needs a big wake-up call … and it’s coming soon, whether you like it or not!

In November 2007 we posted “17 reasons America needs a recession.” Today it’s far worse, and getting worser: Most economists noe predict it’ll take till till after 2011 to burn off the excess housing inventory and foreclosure. RGE Monitor say Fannie and Freddie bailouts aren’t working, they’ll soon be “profoundly insolvent,” need to be “nationalized.” Yet here it is three years later and they’re still kiccking that can downhill.

Lessons learned? Zero. Why? Wall Street, Washington and Corporate America are a one-trick pony with one narrow-minded strategy: Economic g-r-o-w-t-h, bull markets, mega-bonuses. In good times they tout “free markets.” But when greed bombs, these big babies throw free market “principles” under the “Reagan Revolution” bus as their lobbyists go whining to Congress for mega-billion taxpayer bail-outs and access at the Fed casino’s discount window to siphon off more taxpayer money. What hypocritical wimps!

Wall Street and its co-conspirators are doing such a miserable job, America needs a new strategy: Stop all the short-term “hole-plugging.” Let go and let an old-fashioned “Good Depression” do the job that our happy-talking leaders refuse to do. Let it clean house and reawaken America to basic values. Otherwise a “Good Depression” will turn into a new “Great Depression.” Here are seven strong reasons favoring this alternative strategy:

One: Yes, an honest diagnosis, “soul-sickness” in American Capitalism
America’s problems are not the economy, not markets, nor even politics. The endless bickering campaign is distracting us from facing our real long-term problems. Yes, our economic pains are real, but they’re just symptoms. Since 2000 America has seen had a relentless, sickening overdose of bad news: stupidity, deceit, corruption and even evil behavior. Americans are n-u-m-b, suffering Post-Traumatic Shock Syndrome. The real problem is our thinking, our brains, minds, something deep in our cosmic soul says Jack Bogle’s The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism. We lost our values, our moral compass.

Two. Yes, time to admit this already like the 1930’s “Great Depression”
Comparing today with the Great Depression has become common sport. In a Newsweek special “Seeing Shades of the 1930s,” Daniel Gross writes: 75 years ago “Wall Street, after two terms of a business-friendly Republican president, self-immolated on a pyre of greed, incompetence and excessive optimism.” Like Dr. Scott Peck says in The Road Less Traveled: “Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them?” We need to grow up, stop whining, roll our sleeves up, solve real problems.

Three. Yes, “good” depression reveals self-destruct “bubble-thinking”
In a recent Atlantic article Irrational Exuberance author Robert Shiller warns: “Bubbles are primarily social phenomena. Until we understand and address the psychology that fuels them, they’re going to keep forming.” Housing inflated 85% in a decade: “Historically unprecedented … no rational basis for it.” Today there’s a huge excess housing inventory, higher-credit mortgages are now in jeopardy, the write-offs are now projected at $2 trillion, on top of a $3 trillion war, $10 trillion federal budget, and more.

Bubble thinking is contagious, will trigger a pandemic. Shiller says “few people seem immune to boom thinking. The recent bubble grew so large partly because the very people responsible for the financial system’s oversight came to share the general public’s rosy expectations.” Unfortunately our leaders are still ignoring the underlying problem: Nothing is being done about “our psychological vulnerability to bubble thinking.”

Shiller then warns of a new mega-meltdown: “We recently lived through two epidemics of excessive financial optimism. I believe we are close to a third episode, only this one will spread irrational pessimism and distrust—not exuberance … our economic problems will become much worse than they need to be, and our social problems will multiply.”

Four: Yes, a “good” depression will stir outrage, force real reforms
In the 2008 Journal, Jim Grant, respected editor of the Interest Rate Observer, framed his title as a question: “Why No Outrage?” Why? He notes: “Through history, outrageous financial behavior has been met with outrage. But today Wall Street’s damaging recklessness has been met with near-silence, from a too tolerant populace.” Tolerant? No, n-u-m-b! “Human progress seems to be the likeliest culprit.” Fear-driven, we prefer the devil we know to a new one. Yet while “Wall Street may be sweating to fill out this year’s bonus pool,” Grant worries that Wall Street will run “itself and the rest of the American financial system right over a cliff.” A “good” depression brings outrage.

Five. Yes, “good” depression forces Wall Street to “think-outside-box”
In a great Bloomberg Markets feature, “No Easy Fix,” we’re told Wall Street’s “profit formula has hit a wall … Wall Street’s money-making machine is broken and efforts to repair it after the biggest losses in history are likely to undermine profits for years to come.” Merrill Lynch is a good example: They’re selling 615 million new shares, a 38% dilution, while hanging on to “$30.6 billion in crummy derivatives,” says Dennis Berman in The Journal. Merrill’s stock’s about half the 2004 price of $55. Merrill “needs to come up with $2.8 billion in new profit, not sales, to get back to its 2004 per share earnings levels. That’s $43,000 in new profit for each of Merrill’s 65,000 employees.”

Unfortunately, Merrill’s cashcows (off-balance sheet gimmicks, derivatives, repackaged asset-backed securitization) that made mega-bucks the past decade “have largely disappeared. That puts the burden on Merrill’s old-line businesses, brokerage, asset management and investment banking.” Solutions? Cut costs, steal market share or “gradually start to take on more risk on Merrill’s trading desks, which produced the bulk of the $30 billion in losses the past 12 months.”

Warning: Expect more desperate, hi-risk and stupid moves: A new BusinessWeek report says Wall Street’s already lobbying Congress to raid America’s $2.3 trillion “pension honey pot.” Warning: These are the same greed-in-good Gekkos that brought us the last two rapid-fire meltdowns. Stop them before they turn the next into a “Great Depression.”

Six. Yes, a “good depression” can prevent America’s “decline and fall”
In The Price of Liberty: Paying for America’s Wars, Robert Hormats, Goldman Sachs Int’l Vice Chairman, traces America’s wartime financing from the Revolutionary War to present wars. Today we’re “relying on faith over experience, hoping that sustained growth will erase deficits and that the ballooning costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be manageable in the coming decades without difficult reforms.”

Former U.S. Comptroller General, David Walker put it in more omenous terms: “There are striking similarities between America’s current situation and that of another great power from the past: Rome.” They fell for three reasons “worth remembering: declining moral values and political civility at home, an overconfident and overextended military in foreign lands, and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government.”

And Pulitzer-prize winning geographer Jared Diamond takes an even broader historical view in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail: Many “civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power.” He draws historical parallels with America in the past decade. Warning: Wall Street’s next meltdown won’t be a mere statistical recession. Our monetary system, our financial system and our tax base are burning out. Like our over-extended military, we are handicapped in our ability to face new threats, much as were Rome, the Mayans and other great civilizations.

Seven. Yes, a “good” depression will shock America’s “warring” soul
The President said he’s a “war president.” The American economy is a war economy driven by our warring soul. We spend 54% of the tax dollar on war, 47% of the world’s total military spending. A half century ago President Eisenhower warned of this “military industrial complex” that’s running America into bankruptcy. Today, our economy thrives on war and disasters, generating such “spectacular profits that many people around the world” are convinced America’s “rich and powerful must be deliberately causing catastrophes so that they can exploit them” says Naomi Klein in Shock Doctrine.

Klien’s snapshot of Wall Street’s soul is disturbing: “An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, economical or financial. The appetite for easy, short profits, offered by purely speculative investment has turned the stock, currency and real estate markets into crisis-creation machines” Pray for a “Good Depression” … before they trigger a “Great Depression.”

original in MarketWatch: Aug.11’08

1. The event is highly improbable and unpredictable
2. It will have “massive consequences”
3. And, afterwards experts invent reasons why it was predictable, not random.

Taleb also hints to a fourth characteristic. There are “two kinds of these rare events: (a) the narrated Black Swans that are present in current discourse and you are likely to hear about on television, and (b) those that nobody talks about … that you feel ashamed discussing in public because they do not seem plausible.”

But either way, whether we talk too much about a Black Swan coming, or not at all, the evidence indicates that the vast majority of investors end up doing nothing in advance to protect themselves against the “massive consequences” when a ‘Black Swan’ finally triggers a meltdown. And that includes “investors” like our Treasury Secretary and Fed Chairman who failed the test. If you could scan the brains of folks who fail this test you’d hear one side of their brain mumbling excuses to the other side, excuses like:

· “Never saw it coming, never, it really caught me totally by surprise”
· “We sort of saw it, but I guess we were in denial of the consequences.”
· “Yes we saw it, but we ignored the timing and underestimated its impact.”
· “Oh, we knew it was coming, but expected the free market to self-correct.”
· “Of course we all knew it was coming way back a few years ago. But were blinded by greed.
· We were making so much money we hoped we could time it and get out at the top,
after making a killing, just before the music stopped, and leave other investors
and the taxpayers to clean up the mess.”

Since investing is a zero-sum game, with losers as well as winners, this ‘Black Swan Test’ can help you predict your chances of winning and-or-losing money in the next big meltdown coming, perhaps as early as 2011. The test will also expose personality traits that likely affected how much you won-or-lost in prior downturns and bear-recessions, and thus help you change your thinking so that you don’t repeat past mistakes.

The “Black Swan Test” is very simple: First, you have to know whether you’re primarily a left-brain thinker and decision-maker, or whether your dominant mode of thinking and decision-making is right-brained. The basis of this fascinating discovery comes from Jeremy Grantham whose GMO firm manages over $100 billion worldwide.

Right-brain? Left-brain? Whole-brain? Or … In recent months The Economist, Barron’s, SmartMoney, as well as his October 2008 “GMO Quarterly Letter” all elaborated on Grantham’s remarks that identify hemispherical thinking (left-brain versus right-brain) for the current massive meltdown of the global economy, as well as for all past meltdowns, and also as the predicted cause of all future meltdowns. In other words, it’s imbedded in our individual and collected DNA, genes and psyche. This is crucial for us individually, as well as the nation, as it can help predict who will be the winners and the losers in the next meltdown.

But before you jump ahead to see the analysis, take the “Black Swan Test.” Simply answer this question: Are you a left-brain thinker and decision-maker or right-brainer? You probably already have an idea right off the top of your head, based on prior psychological personality tests. Most of us had to take them in school, the military, job interviews … so write it down, right now. You can change it later after thinking about it.

You’re probably also thinking: “I have some of both traits,” that you’re “whole-brained.” In fact, we all are, to some degree. Several years ago I wrote a book on personality testing, The Millionaire Code, using the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types for career and investing. And yes, all our brains are switch-hitters … some of the time.

Bottom line: One side secretly dominates.  But the truth is, most people do have one mode of thinking and decision-making which controls and dominates your brain-functions … when the chips are down … when the pressures on … when your goals are challenged … when a lot of money is at stake … when your values and principles are compromised … when your family’s threatened.

So please take a close look at the traits of these two personality types. Then take the “Black Swan Test.” Which fits you best, remembering that it isn’t either/or, black-or-white, but rather which best describes that part of your brain that dominates and “runs the show” most often? Many 60/40, even 51/49. Here are the choices and characteristics:

“Left-brain” personality traits Logical, rational, math, science, reality-based, facts, details, objective, ordered, knowledge, strategies, rules, pattern-seeking, analytical, practical, safety, systems, focuses on the present, the past, the near-term …
“Right-brain” personality traits Intuitive, philosophical, gut feelings, subjective, alternatives, possibilities, meaning, creativity, imagination, images and symbols, impetuous, focuses on the present, the future, the big picture, the long-term …

Which comes into play when making business decisions, in family budgeting, investment strategies, what and how you buy, sell, trade? Which dominates how you think and make decisions: Is it your left-brain, or does your right-brain run the show? Okay, why does all this matter? How will this choice help predict the next meltdown and bear-recession? And what does it tell us about the past, the dotcom crash and today’s subprime-credit meltdown? More importantly, what does your answer to this “Black Swan Test” say about your chances of winning or losing when the next big one hits?

Grantham channels the next big ‘Black Swan’ Here’s Jeremy Grantham’s fascinating analysis from a Barron’s interview a few months ago: “Why is it that several dozen people saw this crisis coming for years? I described it as being like watching a train wreck in very slow motion. It seemed so inevitable and so merciless, and yet the bosses of Merrill Lynch and Citi and even Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke, none of them seemed to see it coming.”

Our government and banking leaders are “management types who focus on what they are doing this quarter or this annual budget are somewhat impatient.” However, “seeing these things requires more people with a historical perspective who are more thoughtful and more right-brained, but we end up with an army of left-brained immediate doers. So it’s more or less guaranteed that every time we get an outlying, obscure event,” a Black Swan, “that has never happened before in history, they are always going to miss it. And the three or four-dozen-odd characters screaming about it are always going to be ignored.” For emphasis, let’s repeat the key facts here so you can commit them to memory as a guide to your thinking and decision-making in the near future:

1. Many experts did predict and warn of prior meltdowns, years in advance.
2. America’s banks and government are dominated by left-brain decision-makers.
3. These left-brain business and financial types focus on the short-term trades, quarterly
earnings and discount the long-term historical perspective.
4. Consequently, it’s virtually certain that America’s leadership will always miss the
next Black Swan event because they can’t see the next big hit coming.
5. Warnings from the right-brain minority will always be dismissed and ignored during
every bull/bear investment cycle and every future recession/recovery cycle.
6. If you are a left-brain thinker you will miscalculate the timing/impact of the next
meltdown, the next big collapse coming, the next “Black Swan.” Therefore, your assets
and investments will be at great risk of suffering “massive consequences,” which, on a
subconscious level, you already know are “predictable, not random.” As a result of
your denial, you will not take necessary steps to protect your assets.
7. If you’re a right-brain thinker, your longer-term historical view will better arm you
and your family for the next “Black Swan” and, therefore, give you a better chance of
emerging as a winner during the “Great Depression 2″ that follows.

So what are you? A left-brain thinker, a decision-maker? Or  a right-brainer? And who makes more money? Near-term? Long-term?

The rapidly-approaching “third episode” became painfully obvious in reading Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s idealistic “Ten Principles for a Black Swan-proof World” in the Financial Times. Idealistic, yes, but drenched in satire. Satire because we know the new Dillinger Gang, the Goldman Conspiracy and their allies all across Wall Street, could never steal as much money from taxpayers in Taleb’s utopian “Black Swan-proof” world. So Wall Street will surrender nothing, and, therefore, every one of Taleb’s 10 Black Swans remains intact, 10 time bombs, 10 disasters waiting to happen. Here are Taleb’s 10 Rules for a “Black Swan-Proof World:”

1. Don’t give the recovery to the same idiots who created the mess
Taleb was more colorful: “People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it), should never be given a new bus.” There were so many drivers it is “irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess.” But we have. And they will fail to create a “Black Swan-proof world.”

2. “Nothing should ever become too big to fail”
Get rid of losers early, while small, warns Taleb. Unfortunately, bankers are so greedy they’re already spending millions on lobbyists and political donations to do just the opposite. They love “big.” So count on endless loopholes undermining new regs. For example: They expect the Fed and Treasury to bail out “too-big-to-fail” banks, so that definition will be broadened so that every Wall Street bank will be protected, increasing the moral hazard factor and virtually guaranteeing another bubble and meltdown.

3. Stop “socialization of losses and privatization of gains”
Taleb warns: We’ve “managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government.” Only a naive idealist would expect them to surrender this Black Swan: After the next crash Wall Street will dump their losses on taxpayers (again).

4. Incentive bonuses are increasing America’s financial risks
You wouldn’t give incentives to the manager of a nuclear plant, says Taleb. Incentives risk financial safety. “Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.” Sadly, Wall Street greed demands huge bonuses. So no changes: This Black Swan also remains as a WMD.

5. Hi-leveraged debt increases the danger of a massive meltdown
While past equity bubbles were “mild,” future “debt bubbles are vicious.” Add highly-leveraged debt, as we’re doing now with bailouts and stimulus spending, and you get “wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error.” But the Gang can’t see it.

6. No more derivatives … nobody understands these WMDs
Taleb warns: “Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning. … Derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them ‘hedging’ products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.”

7. “Restoring confidence” is for Ponzis, politicians and economists
Rumors are part of life, “governments cannot stop the rumors.” If you hear rhetoric about “restoring confidence” from politicians or economists, they’re hiding something.

8. “Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains”
What a great metaphor: “Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab” And yet, Obama’s new bank regulatory reform package gives Wall Street access to an endless supply of their favorite drugs: derivatives, debt and bonuses.

9. Never count on Wall Street advice or management for retirement
Wall Street hates Taleb for saying this: Markets are not “storehouses of value,” they lack “the certainties that normal citizens require.” But this Black Swan is Wall Street’s “cash cow.” They make hundreds of billions delivering advice and skimming money under the guise of managing our assets. They’ll never give up this opportunity to steal our money.

10. Let entrepreneurs, not bankers, take risks and run America
Taleb the idealist: “Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials.” Before Obama’s reforms Taleb offered his own: We must help “what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalizing the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the ‘Nobel’ in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.” Do this and “we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news. In other words, a place more resistant to black swans.”

Remember Taleb’s 10 Black Swans, because any one of them could trigger a disaster. Yet sadly and unfortunately, we already know Wall Street refuses to rebuild its rotting hull. Wall Street hates change. And is now, like the Titanic before it, on a collision course that will sink the good ship, the USS Utopia and its cargo of 10 beautiful black swans, steaming into the great fog banks hiding a massive iceberg … the “Great Depression 2.”