Risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb predicted the 2008 financial crisis, by pointing out that commonly-used risk models were wrong. Taleb – a distinguished professor of risk engineering at New York University, and author of best-sellers The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness – Taleb became financially independent after the crash of 1987, and wealthy during the 2008 financial crisis.
Taleb noted last year that most boosters for genetically modified foods (GMOs) – including scientists – are totally ignorant about risk analysis. Taleb said that proliferating GMOs could lead to “an irreversible termination of life [on] the planet.”
This month, Taleb – and tail-hedging expert Mark Spitznagel, who also made a hugely profitable billion dollar derivatives bet on the stock market crash of 2008 – wrote in the New York Times: