Preface: An Evening at NYU, Taleb's Article, and a Credit Crisis.

Mathew Gladstein's Complaisanc.

ESSENTIALS.

CHAPTER 1 PLAYING GOD.

It's tough to model human action.

Finance is not as religious as physics.

Black Swans make things harder.

The markets are not Normal and the past is a faulty guide.

Should we care that theorists persist?

CHAPTER 2 THE FINANCIAL ECONOMICS FIEFDOM.

Virginity matters.

When describing reality was okay.

It's the incentives, stupid.

Many obstacles to reform.

Heeding Fischer Black's message.

CHAPTER 3 QUANT INVASION.

Machine learning comes to finance.

It's a computational thing.

Models live here, too.

Quant punting.

Interesting enough for a movie.

CRITIQUE.

CHAPTER 4 COPULATED NIGHTMARES.

Abrupt reform, if not so much prison.

Modeling death.

The 2005 pre-warning.

Rating us into hell.

A disapproving grin.

CHAPTER 5 BLAH VaR BLAH.

Insalubrious charlatanism.

Tracking a true culprit.

Credit truths.

A long rap sheet of evidence.

The police are in on it.

CHAPTER 6 BLUE IS NOT GREEN.

Lehman did die.

Anything is possible.

Buffett versus the Black Swan.

Stubbornly holding the theoretical fort.

An end to indoctrination.

CHAPTER 7 THE BLACK-SCHOLES CONUNDRUM.

Once upon a time at MIT.

Frowning, not smiling.

How Black was that Monday.

A devastating KO.

The Taleb & Haug critique.

CONCLUSIONS.

CHAPTER 8 BLACK SWAN DECEIT?

The tired “perfect storm” alibi may be a facade.

Indoctrinating clients and investors.

The unseemly marketers of academic dogma.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Glorifying complexity.

CHAPTER 9 AN UNHEALTHY YEARNING FOR PRECISION.

Dangerous voluntary enslavement.

Let freedom ring.

Normality can kill you.

A VIXing issue.

Protect those derivatives.

CHAPTER 10 WE NEED FAT TONY.

FINALE SHOULD THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS BE ELIMINATED?

Notes.

Acknowledgments.

About the Author.

Index.