Why “too big to fail” means “wait for it”
Thus every bailout and rescue made in the name of preventing the demise of something deemed “too big to fail” builds up a head of steam until the point is reached when the system can no longer contain the pressure. Then the volatility goes from a seeming zero to an extremely high number. The Black Swan will have arrived. And it always will for as long as fiction is substituted for fact, failure is relentlessly reinforced and false assurances are given all around. In Auden’s words “The lights must never go out, the music must always play … lest we should see where we are, lost in a haunted wood, children afraid of the night who have never been happy or good.” The antidote, Taleb argues, is information. To price risk into the present rather than hide it to fester unseen beneath the surface.
