Fame is a funny thing.  Some folks become legendary while others fade from memory.  Some are famous for productive reasonswhile others are famous for no other reason than their fame.

It seems the ebb and flow of time brings us wave after wave of predictions.  Some are outlandish (lesbian stripper will be impregnated by Elvis then divorce Martian husband), some seem outlandish at first (the world is flat, I swear!) and some are spot on (something tells me giving mortgages to borrowers without requiring proof of income is a bad idea).

What is our obsession with prediction?  Why does prediction bring fame?  Is it deserved?  And what motivates those who make predictions?  Whatever the answers the prediction culture is strongly entrenched so for better or worse we’ll continue to be inundated with them.

The latest predictions, fairly obvious and far from novel, oddly enough come from someone who earned his fame by reminding us that important events often cannot be predicted.  Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, is a principal at Universa Investments LP.  His 2007 bestselling book argues that history is littered with rare events that cannot be predicted by trends.

So what are his predictions?  At a recent conference in Moscow he suggested “every single human being” should bet Treasuries will decline because of the policies of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and President Barack Obama.  Bernanke has pledged to inject Dollars into the U.S. financial system and cut borrowing costs by buying $2.3 trillion of Treasuries and other assets – a tactic known as quantitative easing.  Taleb further suggested dumping Dollars in favor of Euros.

Among Taleb’s comments:

  • “As skeptical as I am about Europe I prefer it by far to the United States.”
  •  “We have a very dire situation in the United States and every day that goes by it gets worse.  Every day that goes by we’re spending money.  We’re increasing that cumulative debt.”
  •  “The U.S. is just like Greece only without the International Monetary Fund to enforce discipline.”
  •  “The only happy thing that can happen in the U.S. is a bond riot” where investors stop buying debt.  This would “force some discipline” in to the Treasuries market.
  •  “Euros have Germany.  The Dollar has nothing.”