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THE RISKS OF FINANCIAL MODELING:

VAR AND THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS AND 

OVERSIGHT 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

Serial No. 111–48

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science and Technology

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.science.house.gov 
(II)

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. BART GORDON, Tennessee, Chair 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California 

DAVID WU, Oregon 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

MARCIA L. FUDGE, Ohio 

BEN R. LUJA ́ N, New Mexico 

PAUL D. TONKO, New York 

PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama 

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey 

JIM MATHESON, Utah 

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

BARON P. HILL, Indiana 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio 

KATHLEEN DAHLKEMPER, Pennsylvania 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

SUZANNE M. KOSMAS, Florida 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

VACANCY 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR., 

Wisconsin 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

BOB INGLIS, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California 

ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska 

PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS AND OVERSIGHT

HON. BRAD MILLER, North Carolina, Chair 

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey 

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee 

CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio 

KATHY DAHLKEMPER, Pennsylvania 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia 

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California 

VACANCY 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

DAN PEARSON Subcommittee Staff Director 

EDITH HOLLEMAN Subcommittee Counsel 

JAMES PAUL Democratic Professional Staff Member 

DOUGLAS S. PASTERNAK Democratic Professional Staff Member 

KEN JACOBSON Democratic Professional Staff Member 

TOM HAMMOND Republican Professional Staff Member 

MOLLY O’ROURKE Research Assistant 

ALEX MATTHEWS Research Assistant 
(III)

C O N T E N T S 

September 10, 2009

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3

Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Brad Miller, Chairman, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House 

of Representatives ................................................................................................ 6

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 8

Statement by Representative Paul C. Broun, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science and 

Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ....................................................... 9

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 10

Panel I:

Dr. Nassim N. Taleb, Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of New York University; Principal, Universa Investments 

L.P. 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 11

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 13

Biography .......................................................................................................... 56

Dr. Richard Bookstaber, Financial Author 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 56

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 59

Biography .......................................................................................................... 67

Discussion 

Can Economic Events Be Predicted? .................................................................. 67

Regulation of Financial Products ........................................................................ 69

‘Too Big to Fail’? ................................................................................................... 70

Wall Street’s Dependency on Government Bailouts .......................................... 72

The Risks of Different Tupes of Institutions ..................................................... 74

Incentive Structures for Trades .......................................................................... 75

Holding Wall Street Accountable for Bonuses ................................................... 78

Malpractice in Risk Management ....................................................................... 79

Clawback Provisions ............................................................................................ 80

Credit Default Swaps ........................................................................................... 81

Were the Bailouts and Stimulus Funds Necessary? ......................................... 82

Panel II:

Dr. Gregg E. Berman, Head of Risk Business, RiskMetrics Group 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 84

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 86

Biography .......................................................................................................... 105

Mr. James G. Rickards, Senior Managing Director for Market Intelligence, 

Omnis, Inc., McLean, VA 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 106

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 108

Biography .......................................................................................................... 116
Page

IV

Mr. Christopher Whalen, Managing Director, Institutional Risk Analytics 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 117

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 118

Biography .......................................................................................................... 124

Dr. David Colander, Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Economics, Middlebury College 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 124

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 127

Biography .......................................................................................................... 141

Discussion 

Appropriate Uses of Financial Models ............................................................... 141

Proposals for Avoiding Recurrences of Financial Problems ............................. 144

Abuse of the VaR .................................................................................................. 145

Past Congressional Attempts to Regulate the Financial Industry .................. 145

Should a Government Agency Test Financial Products for Usefulness? ......... 146

Identifying Firms That Are ‘Too Big to Fail’ ..................................................... 148

Monitoring and Analyzing Hedge Fund Activity and Risk ............................... 149
(1)

THE RISKS OF FINANCIAL MODELING: VAR 

AND THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS AND OVERSIGHT, 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brad Miller 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
2
3

HEARING CHARTER

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS AND OVERSIGHT

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

The Risks of Financial Modeling:

VaR and the Economic Meltdown 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

10:00 A.M.–1:00 P.M.

2318 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING

Purpose 

The Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight on Sept. 10, 2009 convenes 

the first Congressional hearing to examine the role of risk modeling in the global 

financial meltdown. Risk models, and specifically a method of risk measurement 

known as Value-at-Risk, or VaR, are widely viewed as an important factor in the 

extreme risk-taking that financial institutions engaged in leading to last year’s economic upheaval. That risk-taking has led to hundreds of billions of dollars in losses 

to financial firms, and to a global recession with trillions of dollars in direct and 

indirect costs imposed on U.S. taxpayers and working families. 

Given the central role of credit in the economy, the ability of major financial institutions to operate without assuming undue risks that gamble with the stability of 

the financial system, thereby endangering the broader economy, is of the utmost importance to both business and the public at large. The recent behavior by financial 

firms that are deemed ‘‘too big to fail’’ suggests that the financial system as currently structured and regulated creates a ‘‘moral hazard’’ because firms can expect 

that they will be bailed out if their risk-taking fails to pay off. This is exactly what 

happened in the United States in October of 2008 with great consequences to the 

taxpayers, who have been called upon to shoulder much of the huge burden arising 

from financial firms’ underestimation of risk, poor judgment, and profligate behavior. Relied on to guide the decisions of both financial firms and federal regulators 

responsible for monitoring their soundness by ensuring that they have sufficient 

capital, the VaR, whether it was misused or not, was involved in inducing or allowing this situation to arise. 

Given this dual function, it is critical that the Subcommittee examine: the role 

of the VaR and related risk-measurement methods in the current world financial 

crisis; the strengths and weaknesses of, and the limits to, the usefulness of the VaR; 

the degree to which the VaR is understood, and may be manipulated, within the 

institutions where it is in use; and the capabilities and needs of federal supervisors 

who may be called upon to work with the VaR in carrying out their regulatory duties. From a policy perspective, the most important question is how regulators will 

use VaR numbers produced by firms and whether it is an appropriate guide to setting capital reserve requirements. 

This is the second in a series of hearings on how economic thinking and methods 

have been used by policy-makers both inside and outside of government.

The VaR’s Origins and Use 

Risk assessment models in the financial industry are the product of advances in 

economic and statistical methods developed in the social sciences over the last fifty 

years. J.P. Morgan adopted these techniques in developing the VaR in the 1980s as 

a tool to measure the risk of loss to its traders’ portfolios. The VaR could produce 

a single number rating a trader’s (or, in aggregate, the firm’s cumulative) risk of 

loss of portfolio value over a specific period of time at a given level of confidence. 

The VaR provided managers a tool that appeared to allow them to keep a handle 

on the risks they were taking as financial instruments became more varied and 

complex and as assets became more difficult to value. Morgan decided to give the 

methodology of the VaR away, forming the now-independent RiskMetrics Group; 
4

1 ‘‘Risk Management,’’ by Joe Nocera, New York Times, Jan. 4, 2009. J.P. Morgan was not the 

only firm to look for statistical tools to measure the risks of their portfolios, however Morgan’s 

model became the most widely used. The model can be tweaked in many, many ways to meet 

the specific needs of a particular firm. 2 ‘‘Alternative Net Capital Requirements for Broker-Dealers That are Part of Consolidated Supervised Entities; Supervised Investment Bank Holding Companies; Final Rules,’’ Securities and 

Exchange Commission, June 21, 2004, 69 FR 34428–72. (According to Aswath Damodaran, Professor of Finance at the NYU Stern School of Business, ‘‘The first regulatory measures that 

evoke Value-at-Risk, though, were initiated in 1980, when the SEC tied the capital requirements of financial service firms to the losses that would be incurred, with 95 percent confidence 

over a thirty-day interval, in different security classes; historical returns were used to compute 

these potential losses. Although the measures were described as haircuts and not as Value or 

Capital at Risk, it was clear the SEC was requiring financial service firms to embark on the 

process of estimating one month 95 percent VaRs and hold enough capital to cover the potential 

losses.’’ Damodaran, ‘‘Value-at-Risk (VAR),’’ found at http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/?adamodar/

pdfiles/papers/VAR.pdf) 3 ‘‘The Jorion-Taleb Debate,’’ DerivativesStrategy.com, April 1997, http://

www.derivativesstrategy.com/magazine/archive/1997/0497fea2.asp 4 ‘‘Against VAR,’’ by Nassim Taleb, in ‘‘The Jorion-Taleb Debate,’’ ibid. 5 ‘‘In Defense of VAR,’’ by Philippe Jorion, in ‘‘The Jorion-Taleb Debate,’’ ibid. 6 Jorion, idem.

this resulted in the VaR rapidly becoming ‘‘so popular that it was considered the 

risk-model gold standard.’’ 1

To put it very simply, the VaR captures the probability of outcomes distributed 

along a curve-most commonly a ‘‘bell’’ or normal distribution. It provides an answer 

to the question of, ‘‘what is likely to happen tomorrow to the value of an asset?’’ 

by drawing from historical performance data. The highest probability of tomorrow’s 

value is that it will be the same as today’s value; the next highest probability is 

for a very small movement in value up or down, and so on. The more radical the 

movement in value, the lower the probability of that occurring. A manager may ask 

for a projection of the potential loss of an asset or portfolio at the 95 percent or even 

the 99 percent confidence level. At those levels, a complete loss of value is unlikely. 

The complete collapse of an asset or portfolio’s value is not a 1-in-100 event; such 

a collapse is more likely a 1-in-500 or 1-in-10,000 or event. The VaR is unlikely to 

warn, then, of great shifts in value. The danger to the financial firm or the community comes at the extreme margins of the distribution curves produced by the VaR. 

As a map to day-to-day behavior, the VaR is probably pretty accurate for normal 

times, but for asset bubbles or other ‘‘non-normal’’ market conditions, the VaR is 

likely to misrepresent risks and dangers. 

While the VaR was originally designed for financial institutions’ use in-house, it 

has subsequently been given a key role in determining capital requirements for 

large banks under a major multilateral agreement, the Basel II Accord, published 

in 2004. That same year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a 

capital regime applying Basel II standards to the Nation’s largest investment 

banks,2 a move that has been viewed as playing a role in those institutions’ subsequent over-leveraging and liquidity problems. Those financial institutions assured 

regulators that the VaR was a way to see the level of risk they were taking on and 

a low VaR justified lower reserve requirements. (The terms of Basel II are currently 

being re-evaluated in light of the global economic crisis.) 

Along with extensive use, the VaR has come in for extensive criticism. Although 

its merits were debated at least as far back as 1997,3 criticism of the VaR has 

mounted in the wake of last year’s collapse of such major financial institutions as 

Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Among the allegations: that the VaR is inadequate in capturing risks of extreme magnitude but low probability, to which an institution may be left vulnerable; that this shortcoming may open it to manipulation 

by traders taking positions that seem profitable but whose risks they know the VaR 

is unlikely to pick up, and that such ‘‘gaming’’ can increase extreme risk; and that 

use of the VaR, derided for ‘‘quantify[ing] the immeasurable with great precision,’’ 4

promotes an unfounded sense of security within financial institutions creating an 

environment where firms take on more risk than they would without the securityblanket of a VaR number. 

Those who advocate for the VaR argue that any misuse of the model is not the 

model’s fault and that it remains a useful management tool. VaR defenders’ argue 

that its purpose is ‘‘not to describe the worst possible outcomes;’’ 5 that it is essential 

to the ability of a financial institution to arrive at an estimate of its overall risk; 

and that in ‘‘computing their VAR[, institutions] are forced to confront their exposure to financial risks and to set up a proper risk management function,’’ so that 

‘‘the process of getting to VAR may be as important as the number itself.’’ 6 Some 
5

also argue that the VaR remains a useful tool for regulators to use as a baseline 

for establishing reserve requirements for ‘‘normal’’ times. 

Witnesses

Panel I

Dr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of New York University.

Dr. Richard Bookstaber, Financial Author

Panel II

Dr. Gregg Berman, Head of Risk Business, RiskMetrics Group

Mr. James G. Rickards, Senior Managing Director, Omnis Inc.

Mr. Christopher Whalen, Managing Director, Institutional Risk Analytics

Dr. David Colander, Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Economics, 

Middlebury College
6

Chairman MILLER. Good morning, and welcome to today’s hearing: ‘‘The Risks of Financial Modeling: VaR and the Economic Meltdown.’’

Economics has not been known in the past for mathematical precision. Harry Truman said he wanted a one-handed economist because he was frustrated with economists who equivocated by saying 

on the one hand, on the other hand. George Bernard Shaw said 

that if all the world’s economists were laid end to end, they still 

wouldn’t reach a conclusion. And apparently no one is sure who 

first observed that economics was the only field in which it was 

possible for two people to share a Nobel Prize for reaching exactly 

the opposite conclusion about the same question. 

In the last 15 or 20 years, math and physics Ph.D.s from academia and the laboratory have entered the financial sector. Quantitative analysts, or ‘quants,’ directed their mathematical and statistical skills to financial forecasts at a time when global financial 

markets were becoming more interdependent than ever before. 

The quants conceived such financial instruments as collaterized 

debt obligations, or CDOs, and credit default swaps, or CDSs, that 

would never have existed without them and their computers. They 

developed strategies for trading those instruments even in the absence of any underlying security or any real market; for that matter, in the absence of anything at all. They constructed risk models 

that convinced their less scientifically and technologically adept 

bosses that their instruments and strategies were infallibly safe. 

And their bosses spread the faith in the quants’ models to regulators, who agreed to apply them to establish capital reserve requirements that were supposed to guarantee the soundness of financial institutions against adverse events. It almost seemed like 

the economic models had brought the precision of the laws of physics, the same kind of certainty about the movement of the planets, 

to financial risk management. Engineering schools even offered 

courses in ‘‘financial engineering.’’

The supposedly immutable laws underlying the quants’ models, 

however, didn’t work out, and the complex models turned out to 

have hidden risks rather than protecting against them, all at a terrible cost. Those risks, concealed and maybe even encouraged by 

the models, have led to hundreds of billions of dollars in losses to 

investors and taxpayers, to a global recession imposing trillions of 

dollars in losses to the world economy and immeasurable monetary 

and human costs. People around the world are losing their homes, 

their jobs, their dignity and their hope. 

Taxpayers here and around the world are shouldering the burden 

arising from financial firms’ miscalculation of risk, poor judgment, 

excessive bonuses and general profligate behavior. It is for this reason that the Subcommittee is directing our attention today to the 

intersection of quantitative analysis, economics and regulation. The 

Value-at-Risk model, or VaR, stands squarely at the intersection of 

quantitative analysis, economics and regulation. It is the most 

prominent risk model used by major financial institutions. The VaR 

is designed to provide an answer to the question, ‘‘What is the potential loss that could be faced within a limited, specified time to 

the value of an asset?’’
7

The highest probability is that tomorrow’s value will be the same 

as today’s. The next highest probability is that there will be a 

small movement in value up or down, and so on. The more radical 

the movement in value, the lower the probability that it will happen. In other words, the danger to a financial firm or the community comes at the extreme margins of the VaR distribution curve, 

in the tails of the distribution. As a map to day-to-day behavior, 

the VaR is probably pretty accurate for normal times, just as teams 

favored by odds makers usually win. But just as long shots sometimes come home, just as underdogs do sometimes win, asset bubbles or other non-normal market conditions also occur, and the VaR 

is unlikely to capture the risks and dangers. The VaR also cannot 

tell you when you have moved into non-normal market conditions. 

While the VaR was originally designed for financial institutions’ 

in-house use to evaluate short-term risk in their trading books, it 

has been given a key role in determining capital requirements for 

large banks under a major multilateral agreement, the Basel II Accord, published in 2004. That same year, the U.S. Securities and 

Exchange Commission, the SEC, at the instigation of the five largest investment banks, adopted a capital reserve regime, applying 

Basel II standards to the Nation’s largest investment banks—a decision that opened the door to their over-leveraging and liquidity 

problems. Three of the institutions that asked the SEC for this 

change in rules—Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers—

no longer exist. At the time, those financial institutions assured 

regulators that the VaR would reflect the level of risk they were 

taking on, and that a low VaR justified lower capital requirements. 

The result was exactly what the investment banks asked for: lower 

capital requirements that allowed them to invest in even more 

risky financial instruments all justified with risk models that assured regulators that there was nothing to worry about. What 

could possibly go wrong? 

In light of the VaR’s prominent role in the financial crisis, this 

subcommittee is examining that role and the role of related riskmeasurement methods. From a policy perspective, the most important immediate question is how regulators use VaR numbers and 

other such models designed by regulated institutions, and whether 

they are an appropriate guide to setting capital reserve requirements. But, beyond that, we must also ask whether the scientific 

and technical capabilities that led us into the current crisis should 

be applied to prevent future catastrophic events. Can mathematics, 

statistics and economics produce longer-range models, more reliable 

models, that could give us early warning when our financial system 

is headed for trouble? Or are such models inevitably going to be 

abused to hide risk-taking and encourage gambling by firms whose 

failures can throw the whole world into a recession, as they have 

in the last couple of years? If models cannot be a useful guide for 

regulation, should we just abandon the approach, or simply increase reserves, which will reduce profits and perhaps reduce some 

useful economic conduct in the short run, but protect taxpayers and 

the world economy in the long run? 

Those are big questions, but the stakes for taxpayers and investors and the world economy justify some effort to get at some answers. 
8

I now recognize Dr. Broun for his opening statement. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Miller follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN BRAD MILLER

Economics has not been known in the past for mathematical precision. Harry Truman said he wanted a one-handed economist because he was frustrated with economists who equivocated by saying ‘‘on the one hand . . . on the other hand.’’ George 

Bernard Shaw said that if all the world’s economists were laid end to end, they still 

wouldn’t reach a conclusion. And apparently no one knows who first observed that 

economics was the only field in which two people can share a Nobel Prize for reaching exactly the opposite conclusion. 

But in the last 15 or 20 years, math and physics Ph.D.s from academia and the 

laboratory have entered the financial sector. Quantitative analysts, or ‘‘quants,’’ directed their mathematical and statistical skills to financial forecasts at a time when 

global financial markets were becoming more interdependent than ever before. 

The quants conceived such financial instruments as collaterized debt obligations, 

or ‘‘CDOs,’’ and credit default swaps, or ‘‘CDSs,’’ that would never have existed without them and their computers. They developed strategies for trading those instruments even in the absence of any underlying security or any real market. They constructed risk models that convinced their less scientifically and technologically adept 

bosses that their instruments and strategies were infallibly safe. And their bosses 

spread faith in the quants’ models to regulators, who agreed to apply them to establish capital reserve requirements that were supposed to guarantee the soundness of 

financial institutions against adverse events. It almost seemed like economic models 

had brought the precision of the laws of physics to financial risk management. Engineering schools even offered courses in ‘‘financial engineering.’’

The supposedly immutable ‘‘laws’’ underlying the quants’ models didn’t work, and 

the complex models turn out to have hidden risks rather than protected against 

them, all at a terrible cost. Those risks—concealed and maybe even encouraged by 

the models—have led to hundreds of billions of dollars in losses to investors and the 

taxpayers, to a global recession imposing trillions of dollars in losses to the world 

economy and immeasurable monetary and human costs. People around the world 

are losing their jobs, their homes, their dignity and their hope. 

Taxpayers here and around the world are shouldering the burden arising from financial firms’ miscalculation of risk, poor judgment, excessive bonuses and profligate behavior. It is for this reason that the Subcommittee has chosen to direct its 

attention today to that intersection of quantitative analysis, economics, and regulation. The ‘‘Value-at-Risk’’ model, or ‘‘VaR’’ stands squarely at the center of this 

intersection as the most prominent risk model used by major financial institutions. 

The VaR is designed to provide an answer to the question, ‘‘What is the potential 

loss that could be faced within a limited, specified time to the value of an asset?’’

The highest probability is that tomorrow’s value will be the same as today’s; the 

next highest probability is of a very small movement in value up or down, and so 

on. The more radical the movement in value, the lower the probability of its occurrence. In other words, the danger to the financial firm or the community comes at 

the extreme margins of the VaR distribution curve, in the ‘‘tails’’ of the distribution. 

As a map to day-to-day behavior, the VaR is probably pretty accurate for normal 

times, just as teams favored by odds makers usually win. But just as long shots 

sometimes come home, asset bubbles or other ‘‘non-normal’’ market conditions also 

occur, and the VaR is unlikely to capture the risks and dangers. The VaR also cannot tell you when you have moved into ‘‘non-normal’’ market conditions. 

While the VaR was originally designed for financial institutions’ to use in-house 

to evaluate short-term risk in their trading books, it was given a key role in determining capital requirements for large banks under a major multilateral agreement, 

the Basel II Accord, published in 2004. That same year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, at the instigation of the five largest investment banks, adopted 

a capital reserve regime applying Basel II standards to the Nation’s largest investment banks, a decision that opened the door to their over-leveraging and liquidity 

problems. Three of the institutions that asked the SEC for this change in rules—

Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers—no longer exist. At the time, those 

financial institutions assured regulators that the VaR would reflect the level of risk 

they were taking on, and that a low VaR justified lower reserve requirements. The 

result was exactly what the investment banks asked for; lower capital reserve requirements that allowed them to invest in even more risky financial instruments 

all justified with risk models that assured regulators that there was nothing to 

worry about. 
9

In light of the VaR’s prominent role in the financial crisis, this Subcommittee is 

examining that role and the role of related risk-measurement methods. From a policy perspective, the most important immediate question is how regulators use VaR 

numbers and other such models devised by regulated institutions and whether they 

are an appropriate guide to setting capital reserve requirements. But, beyond that, 

we must also ask whether the scientific and technical capabilities that helped lead 

us into the current crisis should be applied to prevent future catastrophic events. 

Can mathematics, statistics, and economics produce longer-range models—models 

that could give us early warning of when our complex financial system is heading 

for trouble? Or are such models inevitably going to be abused to hide risk-taking 

and encourage excessive gambling by firms whose failures can throw the whole 

world into a recession? If models cannot be a useful guide for regulation, should we 

just abandon this approach and simply increase reserves, reducing profits and perhaps some useful economic conduct in the short run, but protecting taxpayers and 

the world economy in the long run? 

These are big questions, but the stakes for taxpayers and investors and the world 

economy justify the effort to get at some answers. 

I now recognize Mr. Broun for his opening statement.

Mr. BROUN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me welcome the witnesses here today and thank them for appearing. Today’s hearing 

on financial modeling continues this committee’s work on the role 

of science in finance and economics. 

As I pointed out in our previous hearing in May, for the last several years Wall Street has increasingly leveraged mathematics, 

physics and science to better inform their decisions. Even before 

Value-at-Risk was developed to characterize risk, bankers and 

economists were looking for a silver bullet to help them to beat the 

market. 

Despite the pursuit of a scientific panacea for financial decisions, 

models are simply tools employed by decision-makers and risk 

managers. They add another layer of insight but are not crystal 

balls. Leveraging a position too heavily or assuming future solvency based on modeling data alone is hazardous, to say the least. 

Conversely, it stands to reason that if we could accurately predict 

markets, then both losses and profits would be limited since there 

would be very little risk involved. 

Modeling is a subject this committee has addressed several times 

in the past, whether it is in regard to climate change, chemical exposures, pandemics, determining spacecraft survivability or attempting to value complex financial instruments. Models are only 

as good as the data and assumptions that go into them. Ultimately 

decisions have to be made based on a number of variables which 

should include scientific models but certainly not exclusively. As 

witnesses in our previous hearing stated, ‘‘Science describes, it does 

not prescribe.’’ No model will ever relieve a banker, trader or risk 

manager of the responsibility to make difficult decisions and hedge 

inevitable uncertainly. 

This committee struggles enough with the complexities of modeling, risk assessment and risk management regarding physical 

sciences. Attempting to adapt those concepts to economics and finance is even more complex. Appreciating this complexity and understanding the limitations and intended purpose of financial models is just as important as what the models tell you. 

We have two esteemed panels of witnesses here today who will 

discuss appropriate roles and limitations of models such as VaR. 

They will explain how these models are used and shed some light 

on what role they may have played in the recent economic crisis. 
10

I look forward to you all’s testimony and I yield back my time. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Broun follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE PAUL C. BROUN

Thank you Mr. Chairman. 

Let me welcome the witnesses here today and thank them for appearing. 

Today’s hearing on Financial Modeling continues this committee’s work on the 

role of science in finance and economics. 

As I pointed out at our previous hearing in May, over the last 30 years Wall 

Street has increasingly leveraged mathematics, physics, and science to better inform 

their decisions. Even before Value-at-Risk (VaR) was developed to characterize risk, 

bankers and economists were looking for a silver bullet to help them beat the market. 

Despite the pursuit of a scientific panacea for financial decisions, models are simply tools employed by decision-makers and risk managers. They add another layer 

of insight, but are not crystal balls. Leveraging a position too heavily or assuming 

future solvency based on modeling data alone is hazardous to say the least. Conversely, it stands to reason that if we could accurately predict markets, then both 

losses and profits would be limited since there would be very little risk involved. 

Modeling is a theme this committee has addressed several times in the past. 

Whether it is in regard to climate change, chemical exposures, pandemics, determining spacecraft survivability, or attempting to value complex financial instruments, models are only as good as the data and assumptions that go into them. Ultimately, decisions have to be made based on a number of variables which should include scientific models, but certainly not exclusively. As a witness at a previous 

hearing stated, ‘‘science describes, it does not prescribe.’’ No model will ever relieve 

a banker, trader, or risk manager of the responsibility to make difficult decisions 

and hedge for inevitable uncertainty. 

This committee struggles enough with the complexities of modeling, risk assessment, and risk management regarding physical sciences. Attempting to adapt those 

concepts to economics and finance is even more complex. Appreciating this complexity, and understanding the limitations and intended purpose of financial models 

is just as important as what the models tell you. 

We have two esteemed panels of witnesses here today who will discuss the appropriate roles and limitations of models such as VaR. They will explain how these 

models are used and shed some light on what role they may have played in the recent economic crisis. I look forward to their testimony and yield back my time. 

Thank you.

Chairman MILLER. Thank you, Dr. Broun. 

I now ask unanimous consent that all additional opening statements submitted by Members be included in the record. Without 

objection, that is so ordered. 

Panel I: 

We do have an outstanding group of witnesses today. I know that 

Chairmen at hearings always say that but it is certainly true. This 

time I mean it. On our first panel, we have two very well known 

and respected authors whose books and other writings warned 

against many of the practices of the financial industry that resulted in the current economic meltdown. Both of them have years 

of experience on Wall Street. Dr. Nassim Taleb is the author of 

‘‘Fooled by Randomness’’ and ‘‘The Black Swan.’’ After a career as 

a trader and fund manager, Dr. Taleb is now the Distinguished 

Professor of Risk Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of New 

York University. And if you are one of that slice of the American 

population for whom Bloomberg and CNBC are your favorite TV 

channels, Dr. Taleb is a rock star. Dr. Taleb is joined by another 

rock star, Dr. Richard Bookstaber, who is the author of ‘‘A Demon 
11

of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds and the Risk of Financial Innovation.’’ Dr. Bookstaber has worked as a risk manager for 

Salomon Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Moore Capital Management. He also runs equity funds and he began on Wall Street designing derivative instruments. Does your mother know about 

that? 

As our witnesses should know, you will each have five minutes 

for your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will be included 

in the record for the hearing. When you all have completed your 

spoken testimony, we will begin with questions and each Member 

will have five minutes to question the panel. It is the practice of 

this subcommittee—it is an investigative and oversight subcommittee—to receive testimony under oath. As I pointed out to 

the panelists at our last hearing on economic issues, to prosecute 

a case for perjury, the prosecutor, the U.S. attorney would have to 

prove what the truth was, that you knew the truth and that you 

consciously departed from it. I think you can sleep easily without 

worrying about a prosecution for perjury, but we will ask you to 

take an oath. Do either of you have any objection to taking an 

oath? Okay. You also have the right to be represented by counsel. 

Do either of you have counsel here? If you would, please stand and 

raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing 

but the truth? 

The record will reflect that both witnesses did take the oath. We 

will begin with Dr. Taleb. Dr. Taleb. 

STATEMENT OF DR. NASSIM N. TALEB, DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF RISK ENGINEERING, POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE 

OF NEW YORK UNIVERSITY; PRINCIPAL, UNIVERSA INVESTMENTS L.P. 

Dr. TALEB. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the 

Committee, thank you for giving me this opportunity to testify on 

the risk measurement methods used by banks, particularly those 

concerned with the risks of VaR events. You know, Value-at-Risk 

is just a method. It is a very general method, not very precise 

method, that measures the risks of VaR events. For example, a 

standard daily Value-at-Risk tells you that if your VaR is a million, 

daily VaR is a million, you have—it is at one percent probability, 

that you have less than one percent chance of losing a million or 

more on a given day. There are of course a lot of variations around 

VaR. For me, they are equally defective. 

Thirteen years ago, I wrote that the VaR encourages misdirected 

people to take risks with shareholders’ and ultimately taxpayers’ 

money—that is, regular people’s money. I have been since begging 

for suspension of these measurements of tail risks. We just don’t 

understand tail events. And lot of people say, oh, let’s measure 

risks. My idea is very different. Let’s find what risks we can measure and any other risks we should be taking instead of doing it the 

opposite way. We take a lot of risks and then we try to find some 

scientists who can confirm these methods, you know, that these 

risks we can measure and that these methods are sound. 

I have been begging, and actually I wrote that I would be on the 

witness stand 13 years ago, and today I am here. The banking system lost so far more than $4.3 trillion, according to the Inter-
12

national Monetary Fund—that is more than they ever made in the 

history of banking—on tail risks, measurements of rare events. 

Most of the losses of course were in the United States, and I am 

not counting the economic consequences. But this shouldn’t have 

happened. Data shows that banks routinely lose everything they 

made over a long period of time in one single blow-up. It happened 

in 1982 because of multi-center banks losing everything made in 

the history of multi-center banking, one single event, loans to Latin 

America. The same thing in variation happened in 1991, and of 

course now. And every time society bails them out. Bank risk takers retain their bonuses and say oh, one fluke, all right, and we 

start again. This is an aberrant case of capitalism for the profit, 

and socialism for the losses. 

So I have five points associated with VaR that I will go over very 

quickly, and I will give my conclusion. Number one: these problems 

were obvious all along. This should not have happened. We knew 

about the defects of the VaR when it was introduced. A lot of traders, a lot of my friends, everyone—I am not the only person ranting 

against VaR. A lot of people were ranting against it before. Nobody 

heard us. Regulators did not listen to anyone who knew what was 

going on, is my point number one. 

Point number two: VaR is ineffective. I guess I don’t need more 

evidence than the recent events to convince you. 

Point number three, and that to me is crucial. You have a graph 

that shows you the performance profile of someone making steady 

earnings for a long time and then losing back everything. You can 

see from that graph, figure one on page four, that this is a strategy 

that is pretty much pursued by the majority of people on Wall 

Street, by banks. They make steady income for a long time, and 

when they blow up, they say, well, you know, it was unexpected, 

it was a black swan. I wrote a book called ‘‘The Black Swan.’’ Unfortunately, they used my book backwards. Oh, and it was unexpected, highly unexpected. They keep their bonuses. They go on vacation and here you have a regular person working very hard, a 

taxpayer, a taxi driver, a post office worker paying taxes to subsidize retrospectively, all right, bonuses made. For example, a 

former government official made $121 million in bonuses at 

Citibank. Okay. He keeps his bonuses. We retrospectively are paying for that. That I said 13 years ago, and it keeps happening, and 

now we are still in the same situation. 

So number four, and that is another crucial point. VaR has side 

effects. It is not neutral. You give someone a number—it has been 

shown and shown repeatedly, if you give someone a number, he 

will act on that number even if you tell him that that number is 

random. We humans cannot be trusted with numbers. You don’t 

give someone the map of the Alps if he is on the Mount Ararat, all 

right, because he is going to act on that map. Even nothing is alot 

better, if it doesn’t work. This is my central point, the side effects 

of numerical precision given to people who do not need it. 

Number five: VaR-style quantitative risk management was behind leverage. We increased our leverage in society as we thought 

we thought we could measure risk. If you think you can measure 

your blow-up risk, you are going to borrow, you know. You have 

more overconfidence, also, as a side effect of measurement, and you 
13

1The author thanks Daniel Kahneman, Pablo Triana, and Eric Weinstein for helpful discussions. 2 Although such definition of VaR is often presented as a ‘‘maximum’’ loss, it is technically not so in an open-ended exposure: since, conditional on losing more than $1 million, you may 

lose a lot more, say $5 million. 3Data shows that methods meant to improve the standard VaR, like ‘‘expected shortfall’’ or 

‘‘conditional VaR’’ are equally defective with economic variables—past losses do not predict future losses. Stress testing is also suspicious because of the subjective nature of ‘‘reasonable 

stress’’ number—we tend to underestimate the magnitude of outliers. ‘‘Jumps’’ are not predictable from past jumps. See Taleb, N.N. (in press) ‘‘Errors, robustness, and the fourth quadrant,’’ 

International Journal of Forecasting (2009). 

are going to borrow. Instead of, you know, taking equity from people, you borrow, so when you blow up, you owe that money. And 

of course, as was discussed in my paper, debt bubbles are very vicious. Equity bubbles are not very vicious. 

Conclusion: What should we be doing? Well, regulators should 

understand that finance is a complex system and complex systems 

have very clear characteristics, you know, and one of them is low 

levels of predictability, particularly of tail events. We have to 

worry—regulators should not encourage model error. My idea is to 

build a society that is resistant to expert mistakes. Regulators increased the dependence of society on expert mistakes and other 

things also in the Value-at-Risk, these AAA things. Okay. So we 

want to reduce that. We want to build a society that can sustain 

shocks because we are moving more and more into a world that delivers very large-scale variables, and we know exactly how they affect us or we know with some precision how they affect us, and we 

know how to build shocks. So the job of regulators should be to 

lower the impact of model error, and this is reminiscent of medicine. You know, the FDA, they don’t let you bring any medicine 

without showing the side effects. Well, we should be doing the 

same thing in economic life. Thank you very much for this opportunity. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Taleb follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF NASSIM N. TALEB

Report on the Risks of Financial Modeling,

VaR and the Economic Breakdown 

INTRODUCTION 

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the Committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify on the risk measurement methods used by banks, 

particularly those concerned with blowup risk, estimates of probabilities of losses 

from extreme events (‘‘tail risks’’), generally bundled under VaR.1

What is the VaR? It is simply a model that is supposed to project the expected 

extreme loss in an institution’s portfolio that can occur over a specific time frame 

at a specified level of confidence. Take an example. A standard daily VaR of $1 million at a one percent probability tells you that you have less than a one percent 

chance of losing $1 million or more on a given day.2 There are many modifications 

around VaR, ‘‘conditional VaR,’’ 3 so my discussion concerns all quantitative (and 

probabilistic) methods concerned with losses associated with rare events. Simply, 

there are limitations to our ability to measure the risks of extreme events. 

Thirteen years ago, I warned that ‘‘VaR encourages misdirected people to take 

risks with shareholders’, and ultimately taxpayers’ money.’’ I have since been begging for the suspension of these measurements of tail risks. But this came a bit late. 

For the banking system has lost so far, according to the International Monetary 

Fund, in excess of four trillion dollars directly as a result of faulty risk management. Most of the losses were in the U.S. and will be directly borne by taxpayers. 

These losses do not include the other costs of the economic crisis. 
14

4My recollection is that the VaR was not initially taken seriously by traders and managers. 

It took a long time for the practice to spread—and it was only after regulators got involved that 

it became widespread. 5See Taleb, N.N. and Pilpel, A. (2007) Epistemology and Risk Management, Risk and Regulation, 13. 6We are in the worst type of complex system characterized by high interdependence, low predictability, and vulnerability to extreme events. See N.N. Taleb, The Black Swan, Random 

House, 2007. 7There are other problems. 1) VaR does not replicate out of sample—the past almost never 

predicts subsequent blowups. (see data in the Fourth Quadrant). 2) A decrease in VaR does not 

mean decrease in risks; often quite the opposite holds, which allows the measure to be gamed. 8The roots of VaR come from modern financial theory (Markowitz, Sharpe, Miller, Merton, 

Scholes) which, in spite of its patent lack of scientific validity, continues to be taught in business 

schools. See Taleb, N.N., (2000), The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Random 

House.

Data shows that banks routinely lose everything earned in their past history in 

single blowups—this happened in 1982, 1991, and, of course now. Every time society 

bails them out—while bank risk-takers retain their past bonuses and start the game 

afresh. This is an aberrant case of capitalism for the profits and socialism for the 

losses.

MAIN PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH VAR-STYLE RISK MEASUREMENT 

1. These problems have been obvious all along

My first encounter with the VaR was as a derivatives trader in the early 1990s 

when it was first introduced. I saw its underestimation of the risks of a portfolio 

by a factor of 100—you set up your book to lose no more than $100,000 and you 

take a $10,000,000 hit. Worse, there was no way to get a handle on how much its 

underestimation could be. 

Using VaR after the crash of 1987 proved strangely gullible. But the fact that its 

use was not suspended after the many subsequent major events, such as the LongTerm Capital Management blowup in 1998, requires some explanation. Furthermore, regulators started promoting VaR (Basel 2) just as evidence was mounting 

against it.4

2. VaR is ineffective and lacks in robustness

Alas, we cannot ‘‘measure’’ the risk of future rare events like we measure the temperature. By robustness, I mean that the measure does not change much if you 

change the model, technique, or theory. Indeed risk estimation has nothing to do 

with the notion of measure. And the rarer the event, the harder it is to compute 

its probability—yet the rarer the event, the larger the consequences.5

Furthermore, the type of randomness we have with economic variables does not 

have a well-tractable, well-known structure, and can deliver vastly large events—

and we are unable to get a handle on ‘‘how large.’’ Conventional statistics, derived 

on a different class of variables, fail us here.6,7G5,8

3. VaR encourages ‘‘low volatility, high blowup’’ risk taking which can be 

gamed by the Wall Street bonus structure

Figure 1–A typical ‘‘blow-up’’ strategy with hidden risks: appearance of low volatility, with a high risk of blowup. The trader makes 11 bonuses, with no subsequent 

‘‘clawback’’ as losses are borne by shareholders, then taxpayers. This is the profile 

for banks (losses in 1982,1991, and 2008) and many hedge funds. VaR encourages 

such types of risk taking.
15

9Taleb, N.N. (2004) ‘‘Bleed or Blowup: What Does Empirical Psychology Tell Us About the 

Preference For Negative Skewness?,’’ Journal of Behavioral Finance, 5. 10 Even Chairman Bernanke was fooled by the apparent stability as he pronounced it the 

‘‘great moderation.’’ 11 Numerous experiments provide evidence that professionals are significantly influenced by 

numbers that they know to be irrelevant to their decision, like writing down the last four digits 

of one’s social security number before making a numerical estimate of potential market moves. 

German judges rolling dice before sentencing showed an increase of 50 percent in the length 

of the sentence when the dice show a high number, without being conscious of it. See Birte 

Englich and Thomas Mussweiler, ‘‘Sentencing under Uncertainty: Anchoring Effects in the 

Courtroom,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 31, No. 7 (2001), pp. 1535–1551; Birte 

Englich, Thomas Mussweiler, and Fritz Strack, ‘‘Playing Dice with Criminal Sentences: the Influence of Irrelevant Anchors on Experts’ Judicial Decision Making,’’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Feb. 2006), pp. 188–200. 12There is a large difference between equity and credit bubbles. Equity bubbles are benign. 

We went through an equity bubble in 2000, without major problems.

Some credit can be benign. Credit that facilitates trade and economic transactions and finances conservative house-ownership does not have the same risk properties as credit for speculative reasons resulting from overconfidence.

I have shown that operators like to engage in a ‘‘blow-up’’ strategy, (switching 

risks from visible to hidden), which consists in producing steady profits for a long 

time, collecting bonuses, then losing everything in a single blowup.9 Such trades pay 

extremely well for the trader—but not for society. For instance, a member of 

Citicorp’s executive committee (and former government official) collected $120 million of bonuses over the years of hidden risks before the blowup; regular taxpayers 

are financing him retrospectively. 

Blowup risks kept increasing over the past few years, while the appearance of stability has increased.10

4. Var has severe side effects (anchoring)

Many people favor the adjunct application of VaR on grounds that it is ‘‘not harmful,’’ using arguments like ‘‘we are aware of its defects.’’ VaR has side effects of increasing risk-taking, even by those who know that it is not reliable. We have ample 

evidence of so called ‘‘anchoring’’ 11 in the calibration of decisions. Information, even 

when it is known to be sterile, increases overconfidence. 

5. VaR-style quantitative risk measurement is the engine behind leverage, 

the main cause of the current crisis

Leverage12 is a direct result of underestimation of the risks of extreme events—

and the illusion that these risks are measurable. Someone more careful (or realistic) 

would issue equity.

April 28, 2004 was a very sad day, when the SEC, at the instigation of the investment banks, initiated the abandonment of hard (i.e., robust) risk measures like leverage, in favor of more model-based probabilistic, and fragile, ones.
16

13 ‘‘When William Harvey demonstrated the mechanism of blood circulation in the 1620s, humoral theory and its related practices should have disappeared, because the anatomy and physiology on which it relied was incompatible with this picture of the organism. In fact, people continued to refer to spirits and humors, and doctors continued to prescribe phlebotomies, enemas, 

and cataplasms, for centuries more—even when it was established in the mid-1800, most notably by Louis Pasteur, that germs were the cause of disease.’’ Noga Arikha ‘‘Just Life in a Nutshell: Humours as common sense,’’ in The Philosophical Forum Quarterly, XXXIX, 3. 14Most of the use of probabilistic methods lacking both mathematical and empirical justification can be attributed to the prestige given to modern finance by the various Nobel memorial 

prizes in economics. See P. Triana, 2009, Lecturing Birds on Flying: Can Mathematical Theories 

Destroy the Markets?, J. Wiley.

CONCLUSION: WHAT REGULATORY STRUCTURE DO WE NEED? 

Regulators should understand that financial markets are a complex system and 

work on increasing the robustness in it, by preventing ‘‘too big to fail’’ situations, 

favoring diversity in risk taking, allowing entities to absorb large shocks, and reducing the effect of model error (see ‘‘Ten Points for a Black Swan Robust Society,’’ in 

Appendix II). This implies reliance on ‘‘hard,’’ non-probabilistic measures rather 

than more error-prone ones. For instance ‘‘leverage’’ is a robust measures (like the 

temperature, it does not change with your model), while VaR is not. 

Furthermore, we need to examine the toxicity of models; financial regulators 

should have the same test as the Food and Drug Administration does. The promoter 

of the probability model must be able to show that no one will be harmed even if 

the event is rare. Alas, the history of medicine shows translational gaps, the lag between the discovery of harm and suspension of harmful practice, lasting up to 200 

years in pre-modern medicine.13 Unfortunately, economics resemble pre-modern 

medicine.14 But we cannot afford to wait 200 years to find out that the medicine 

is far worse than the disease. We cannot afford to wait even months. 

APPENDIX I: 

AUTHOR’S WARNINGS, 1996–2007

1996–1997

VaR is charlatanism because it tries to estimate something that is scientifically 

impossible to estimate, namely the risk of rare events. It gives people a misleading 

sense of precision. (Derivatives Strategy, citing from Dynamic Hedging) 

VaR encourages misdirected people to take risks with shareholders’, and ultimately taxpayers’ money. (Derivatives Strategy) 

2003

Fannie Mae’s models (for calibrating to the risks of rare events) are pseudoscience. (New York Times—Alex Berenson’s article on FNMA) 

‘‘What happened to LTCM will look like a picnic compared to what should happen 

to you.’’ (Lecture, Women in Hedge Funds Association, cited in Hedge World) 

2007

Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, 

vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists 

deems these events ‘‘unlikely.’’ (The Black Swan) 

Banks are now more vulnerable to the Black Swan than ever before with ‘‘scientists’’ among their staff taking care of exposures. The giant firm, J.P. Morgan, put 

the entire world at risk by introducing in the nineties RiskMetrics, a phony method 

aiming at managing people’s risks. A related method called ‘‘Value-at-Risk,’’ which 

relies on the quantitative measurement of risk, has been spreading. (The Black 

Swan)
17

APPENDIX II: 

TEN PRINCIPLES FOR A BLACK SWAN

ROBUST WORLD 

(FINANCIAL TIMES, APRIL 8, 2009) 

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should 

ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks—and hence the most fragile—become the biggest.

2. No socialization of losses and privatization of gains. Whatever may need 

to be bailed out should be nationalized; whatever does not need a bail-out should 

be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. 

In the U.S. in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) 

should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, 

regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organizations staffed with 

economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and 

foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.

4. Do not let someone making an ‘‘incentive’’ bonus manage a nuclear 

plant—or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to 

show ‘‘profits’’ while claiming to be ‘‘conservative.’’ 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.

5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from 

globalization and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by 

simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for 

error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have 

proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.

6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning. Complex 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. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should 

never need to ‘‘restore confidence.’’ Cascading rumors are a product of complex 

systems. Governments cannot stop the rumors. Simply, we need to be in a position 

to shrug off rumors, be robust in the face of them.

8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. 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.

9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible ‘‘expert’’ advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialized. We should 

learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbor the certainties 

that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own 

businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).

10. Make an omelet with the broken eggs. 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; we will 

have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping 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 buy-outs, 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. 

Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller 

companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bank-
18

ers, 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.
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BIOGRAPHY FOR NASSIM N. TALEB

Nassim N. Taleb is currently Distinguished Professor in Risk Engineering at New 

York University Polytechnic Institute and Principal at Universa Investments. He 

spent close to 21 years as a senior trader on Wall Street before becoming a full time 

scholar. He is a combination of a scholar of risk and model error, literary essayist, 

and derivatives trader. He is known for a multi-disciplinary approach to the role of 

the high-impact rare event—across economics, philosophy, finance, engineering, and 

history. He also runs experiments on human errors in the assessment of probabilities of rare events as part of the Decision Science Laboratory. His current program is to design ways to live in a world we don’t quite understand and help 

‘‘robustify’’ the world against the Black Swan. 

Taleb is, among other books and research papers, the author of the NYT Bestseller The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable which was according 

to The Times as one of the 12 most influential books since WW-II. His books have 

close to two and a half million copies in print in 31 languages. 

Taleb has an MBA from Wharton and a Ph.D. from the University of Paris. 

Among other activities, he is currently on the King of Sweden advisory committee 

for climate risks and modeling. The British Tory opposition is using Black Swan 

thinking as part of their platform.

Chairman MILLER. Thank you, Dr. Taleb. 

Dr. Bookstaber for five minutes. 

STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD BOOKSTABER, FINANCIAL 

AUTHOR 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, 

I thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My oral testimony 

will begin with a discussion of the limitations of VaR. I will then 

discuss the role of VaR in the recent market meltdown and conclude with suggestions for filling the gap left by the limitations of 

VaR. 

The limitations of VaR are readily apparent by looking at the 

critical assumptions behind it. For the standard construction of 

VaR, these assumptions are, first, that all portfolio positions are included; secondly, that the sample history used in VaR is a reasonable representation of things that are likely to occur going forward; 

and third, that the normal distribution function that it uses is a 

reasonable representation of the statistical distribution underlying 

the returns. These assumptions are often violated, leading VaR estimates to be misleading. So let me discuss each of these in turn. 

First of all, in terms of incomplete positions, obviously, for risk 

to be measured, all the risky positions must be included in the 

analysis, but for larger institutions, it is commonplace for some positions to be excluded. This can happen because the positions are 

held off a balance sheet beyond the purview of those doing the risk 

analysis, because they are in complex instruments that have not 

been sufficiently modeled, or because they are in new so-called innovative products that have yet to be added into the risk process. 

This provides a compelling reason to have what I call ‘flight to simplicity’ in financial products, to move away from complex and customized innovative products and towards standardization. 

In terms of unrepresentative sample periods, VaR gives a measure of risk that assumes tomorrow is drawn from the same distribution as the sample data used to compute the VaR. If the future does not look like the past—in particular, if a crisis emerges, 

VaR will no longer be a good measure of risk, which is to say that 

VaR is a good measure of risk except when it really matters. 
57

Third, in terms of fat tails and normal distribution, largely because of crisis events, security returns tend to have fatter tails 

than what is represented by a normal distribution. That is, there 

tend to be more outliers and extreme events than a normal distribution would imply. Now, one way to address this well-known inaccuracy is to modify the distribution allowing for fatter tails, but 

this adds complication to VaR analysis while contributing little insight in terms of risk. 

A better approach is to accept the limitations of VaR, and then 

try to understand the market crises where VaR fails. If we understand the dynamics of market crises, we may be able to improve 

risk management to make it work when it is of the greatest importance. A starting point for understanding financial market crises is 

leverage and the crowding of trades. These lead to the common crisis dynamic—what I call a liquidity crisis cycle. Such a cycle begins 

when there is some exogenous shock that causes a drop in a market that is crowded with leveraged investors. The highly leveraged 

investors are forced to sell to meet their margin requirements. 

Their selling drops prices further, which in turn forces yet more 

selling, resulting in a cascading cycle downward in prices. Now, the 

investors that are under pressure discover there is no longer any 

liquidity in the stressed market, so they start to liquidate their positions in other markets to generate the required margin. And if 

many investors that are in the first market also have high exposure in a second one, the downward spiral propagates to this second market. 

This phenomenon explains why a crisis can spread in surprising 

and unpredictable ways. The contagion is primarily driven by what 

other securities are owned by the funds that need to sell. For example, a simple example of this is what happened with the silver 

bubble back in 1980. The silver market became closely linked with 

the market for cattle. Why? Because the Hunt family had margin 

calls on their silver position, and so they sold whatever else they 

could, and what else they had to sell happened to be cattle. So thus 

there was a contagion based not on any economic linkage but based 

on who was under pressure and what else they owned. 

Now, this cycle evolves unrelated to historical relationships, out 

of the reach of VaR-type models. But that doesn’t mean it is beyond 

analysis. But if we want to analyze it, we need to know the leverage and the positions of the major market participants. Gathering 

these critical data is the first step in measuring and managing crisis risk, and should be the role of a market regulator. 

Now, let me talk specifically about the role of VaR in the current 

crisis. Whatever the limitations of VaR models, they were not the 

key culprits in the case of the multi-billion dollar write-downs central to the current crisis. The large bank inventories were there to 

be seen. You didn’t need to have any models or sophisticated detective or forensic work to see them. Furthermore, it was clear that 

these inventories were illiquid and that their market values were 

uncertain. It is hard to understand how this elephant in the room 

was missed, how a risk manager could see inventory grow from a 

few billion dollars to 10 billion dollars and then to 30 or 40 billion 

dollars, and not take action to bring that inventory down. 
58

One has to look beyond VaR to sheer stupidity or collective management failure. The risk managers missed the growing inventory, 

or did not have the courage of their conviction to insist on its being 

reduced, or the senior management was not willing to heed their 

demands. Whatever the reason, VaR was not central to the crisis. 

Focus would be better placed on failures in risk governance than 

failures of risk models, whatever the flaws of VaR are. 

Now, in summary, let me first emphasize, I believe that VaR 

does have value. If one were forced to pick a single number for the 

risk of a portfolio in the near future, VaR would be a good choice 

for the job. VaR illuminates most of the risk landscape, but, unfortunately, the places its light fails to reach are the canyons, crevices 

and cliffs. 

So we can do two things to try to improve on and address the 

limitations of VaR. One is to employ coarser measures of risk, 

measures that have fewer assumptions and that are less dependent 

on the future looking like the past. The use of the leverage ratio 

mandated by U.S. regulators is an example of such a measure. The 

leverage ratio does not overlay assumptions about the correlation 

or the volatility of the assets, and does not assume any mitigating 

effects from diversification. It does, however, have its own limitations as a basis for capital adequacy. The second is to add other 

risk methods that are better at illuminating the areas VaR does 

not reach. So in addition to measuring risk using a standard VaR 

approach, develop scenarios for crises and test capital adequacy 

under those scenarios. Critical, of course, to the success of this approach is the ability to ferret out potential crises and describe them 

adequately for risk purposes. We can go a long way toward this 

goal by having regulators amass and aggregate data on the positions and leverage of large financial institutions. These data are 

critical because we cannot manage what we cannot measure, and 

we cannot measure what we cannot see. With these data, we will 

be better able to measure the crowding and leverage that leads to 

crisis, and shed light on risks that fail to be illuminated by VaR. 

Let me close my oral comments by responding to comments by 

both the Chairman and the Ranking Member. The analogy of VaR 

and the models related to risk to models used in other engineering 

and physical systems—I think there is a critical distinction between financial systems and other engineering systems, because financial systems are open to gaming. If I discover a valve that is 

poorly designed in a nuclear power plant and design a new valve 

to replace it, and install that valve, the valve doesn’t sit there and 

try to figure out if it can fool me into thinking it is on when it is 

really off. But in the financial markets, that is what happens. So 

any engineering solution or any analogy to physical processes is 

going to be flawed when they are applied to the financial markets, 

because those in the financial markets can game against the system to try to find ways around any regulation, and to find other 

ways to do what they want to do. And I believe that one of the key 

tools for this type of gaming are sophisticated, innovative, complex 

products that can often obfuscate what people are doing. 

So, I think, parenthetical to the issues of VaR and other models 

is, number one, the recognition that no model can work completely 

in the financial markets the way they can in other physical sys-
59

1The risk for a Normal distribution is fully defined by the standard deviation, and the results 

from Step 3 can be used to estimate the standard deviation of the sample. If the estimated 

standard deviation is, say, five percent, then the VaR at the ten percent level will be a loss of 

eight percent. For a Normal distribution the ten percent level is approximately 1.6 standard deviations.

tems, and number two, that if we want to curb or diminish the 

issues of gaming, we have to have more simplicity and transparency in the financial instruments. 

Thank you. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Bookstaber follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICHARD BOOKSTABER

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I thank you for the opportunity 

to testify today. My name is Richard Bookstaber. Over the past decade I have 

worked as the risk manager in two of the world’s largest hedge funds, Moore Capital 

Management and, most recently, Bridgewater Associates. In the 1990s I oversaw 

firm-wide risk at Salomon Brothers, which at the time was the largest risk-taking 

firm in the world, and before that was in charge of market risk at Morgan Stanley. 

I am the author of A Demon of Our Own Design—Markets, Hedge Funds, and the 

Perils of Financial Innovation. Published in April, 2007, this book warned of the potential for financial crisis resulting from the growth of leverage and the proliferation 

of derivatives and other innovative products. 

Although I have extensive experience on both the buy-side and sell-side, I left my 

position at Bridgewater Associates at the end of 2008, and come before the Committee in an unaffiliated capacity, representing no industry interests. 

My testimony will discuss what VaR is, how it can be used and more importantly, 

how it can be misused. I will focus on the limitations of VaR in measuring crisis 

risk. I will then discuss the role of VaR in the recent market meltdown, concluding 

with suggestions for ways to fill the gaps left by the limitations of VaR.

What is VaR? 

VaR, or Value-at-Risk, measures the risk of a portfolio of assets by estimating the 

probability that a given loss might occur. For example, the dollar VaR for a particular portfolio might be expressed as ‘‘there is a ten percent probability that this 

portfolio will lose more than $VaR over the next day.’’

Here is a simplified version of the steps in constructing a VaR estimate for the 

potential loss at the ten percent level:

1. Identify all of the positions held by the portfolio.

2. Get the daily returns for each of these positions for the past 250 trading days 

(about a one-year period).

3. Use those returns to construct the return to the overall portfolio for each day 

over the last 250 trading days.

4. Order the returns for those days from the highest to the lowest, and pick 

the return for the day that is the 25th worst day’s return. That will be a 

raw estimate of the daily VaR at the ten percent level.

5. Smooth the results by fitting this set of returns to the Normal distribution 

function.1

Limitations of VaR 

The critical assumptions behind the construction of VaR are made clear by the 

process described above:

1. All of the portfolio positions are included.

2. The sample history is a reasonable representation of what things will look 

like going forward.

3. The Normal distribution function is a reasonable representation of the statistical distribution underlying the returns.

The limitations to VaR boil down to issues with these three assumptions, assumptions that are often violated, leading VaR estimates to be misleading.
60

2 Regulatory capital on the trading assets that a bank does not include in VaR—or for which 

the bank’s VaR model does not pass regulatory scrutiny—is computed using a risk-rating based 

approach. However, the rating process itself suffers from many of the difficulties associated with 

calculating VaR, as illustrated by the AAA ratings assigned to many mortgage-backed CDOs 

and the consequent severe underestimation of the capital required to support those assets. 3 I discuss the complexity and related risk issues surrounding derivatives and related innovative products in Testimony of Richard Bookstaber, Submitted to the Senate of the United States, 

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry for the Hearing: ‘‘Regulatory Reform and the 

Derivatives Markets,’’ June 4, 2009. 4One way to try to overcome the problem of relying on the past is to use a very long time 

period in the VaR calculation, with the idea that a longer period will include many different 

regimes, crises and relationships. Such a view misses the way different regimes, essentially different distributions, mix to lead to a final result. A long time period gives muddied results. To 

see this, imagine the case where in half of the past two assets were strongly positively correlated and the other half they were strongly negatively correlated. The mixing of the two would 

suggest the average of little correlation, thus giving a risk posture that did not exist in either 

period, but that also incorrectly suggests diversification opportunities. 5 As a corollary to this, one could also say that diversification works except when it really matters. 6For example, Investments, by Bodie, Kane, and Marcus, 8th edition (McGraw-Hill/Irwin), has 

a section (page 148) entitled ‘‘Measurement of Risk with Non-normal Distributions.’’

Incomplete positions 

Obviously, risk cannot be fully represented if not all of the risky positions are included in the analysis. But for larger institutions, it is commonplace for this to 

occur. Positions might be excluded because they are held off-balance sheet, beyond 

the purview of those doing the risk analysis; they might be in complex instruments 

that have not been sufficiently modeled or that are difficult to include in the position database; or they might be in new products that have not yet been included 

in the risk process. In the recent crisis, some banks failed to include positions in 

collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) for all three of these reasons.2 And that exclusion was not considered an immediate concern because they were believed to be low 

risk, having attained a AAA rating. 

The inability to include all of the positions in the VaR risk analysis, the most rudimentary step for VaR to be useful, is pervasive among the larger institutions in 

the industry. This provides a compelling reason to have a ‘flight to simplicity’ in financial products, to move away from complex and customized innovative products 

and toward standardization.3

Unrepresentative sample period 

VaR gives a measure of risk that assumes tomorrow is drawn from the same distribution as the sample data used to compute the VaR. If the future does not look 

like the past, in particular if a crisis emerges, then VaR will no longer be a good 

measure of risk.4 Which is to say that VaR is a good measure of risk except when 

it really matters.5

It is well known that VaR cannot measure crisis risk. During periods of crisis the 

relationship between securities changes in strange and seemingly unpredictable 

ways. VaR, which depends critically on a set structure for volatility and correlation, 

cannot provide useful information in this situation. It contains no mechanism for 

predicting the type of crisis that might occur, and does not consider the dynamics 

of market crises. This is not to say that VaR has no value or is hopelessly flawed. 

Most of the time it will provide a reasonable measure of risk—indeed the vast majority of the time this will be the case. If one were forced to pick a single number 

for the risk of a portfolio in the near future, VaR would be a good choice for the 

job. VaR illuminates most of the risk landscape. But unfortunately, the places its 

light fails to reach are the canyons, crevices and cliffs.

Fat Tails and the Normal Distribution 

Largely because of crisis events, security returns tend to have fatter tails than 

what is represented by a Normal distribution. That is, there tend to be more 

outliers and extreme events than what a Normal distribution would predict. This 

leads to justifiable criticism of VaR for its use of the Normal distribution. However, 

sometimes this criticism is overzealous, suggesting that the professionals who assume a Normal distribution in their analysis are poorly trained or worse. Such criticism is unwarranted; the limitations of the Normal distribution are well-known. I 

do not know of anyone working in financial risk management, or indeed in quantitative finance generally, who does not recognize that security returns may have 

fat tails. It is even discussed in many investment textbooks, so it is a point that 

is hard to miss.6
61

7 Extreme value theory is the bastion for techniques that employ distributions with a higher 

probability of extreme events. 8The use of VaR-based capital can actually contribute to this sort of cycle. VaR will increase 

because of the higher volatility—and also possibly because of the higher correlations—leading 

potential liquidity providers and lenders to pull back. This was a likely exacerbating effect during the 1997 Asian crisis. 9 As an illustration, the proximate cause of Long Term Capital Management’s (LTCM’s) demise was the Russian default in August, 1998. But LTCM was not highly exposed to Russia. 

A reasonable risk manager, aware of the Russian risks, might not have viewed it as critical to 

LTCM. But the Russian default hurt LTCM because many of those who did have high leverage 

in Russia also had positions in other markets where LTCM was leveraged. When the Russian 

debt markets failed and these investors had to come up with capital, they sold their more liquid 

positions in, among other things, Danish mortgage bonds. So the Danish mortgage bond market 

and these other markets went into a tail spin, and because LTCM was heavily exposed in these 

markets, the contagion took LTCM with it. 10 I discuss the need for firm-level position and leverage data in crisis risk management in 

previous testimony before both the House and the Senate. For example, Testimony of Richard 

Bookstaber, Submitted to the Congress of the United States, House Financial Services Committee, for the Hearing: ‘‘Systemic Risk: Examining Regulators Ability to Respond to Threats 

Continued

The issue is how this well-known inaccuracy of the Normal distribution is addressed. One way is knowingly to misuse VaR, to ignore the problem and act as if 

VaR can do what it cannot. Another is to modify the distribution to allow for fatter 

tails.7 This adds complication and obfuscation to the VaR analysis, because any approach employing a fat-tailed distribution increases the number of parameters to estimate, and this increases the chance that the distribution will be mis-specified. And 

in any case, simply fattening up the tails of the distribution provides little insight 

for risk management. 

I remember a cartoon that showed a man sitting behind a desk with a name plate 

that read ‘Risk Manager.’ The man sitting in front of the desk said, ‘‘Be careful? 

That’s all you can tell me, is to be careful?’’ Stopping with the observation that extreme events can occur in the markets and redrawing the distribution accordingly 

is about as useful as saying ‘‘be careful.’’ A better approach is to accept the limitations of VaR, and then try to understand the nature of the extreme events, the market crises where VaR fails. If we understand the dynamics of market crisis, we may 

be able to improve risk management to make it work when it is of the greatest importance.

Understanding the Dynamics of Market Crises 

A starting point for understanding financial market crises is leverage and the 

crowding of trades, both of which have effects that lead to a common crisis dynamic, 

the liquidity crisis cycle. 

Such a cycle begins when an exogenous shock causes a drop in a market that is 

crowded with leveraged investors. The highly leveraged investors are forced to sell 

to meet their margin requirements. Their selling drops prices further, which in turn 

forces yet more selling, resulting in a cascading cycle downward in prices. Those investors that are under pressure discover there is no longer liquidity in the stressed 

market, so they start to liquidate their positions in other markets to generate the 

required margin. If many of the investors that are in the first market also have high 

exposure in a second one, the downward spiral propagates to this second market.8

This phenomenon explains why a crisis can spread in surprising and unpredictable ways. The contagion is driven primarily by what other securities are owned by 

the funds that need to sell.9 For example, when the silver bubble burst in 1980, the 

silver market became closely linked to the market for cattle. Why? Because when 

the Hunt family had to meet margin calls on their silver positions, they sold whatever else they could. And they happened also to be invested in cattle. Thus there 

is contagion based not on economic linkages, but based on who is under pressure 

and what else they are holding. 

This cycle evolves unrelated to historical relationships, out of the reach of VaRtype models. But that does not mean it is beyond analysis. Granted it is not easy 

to trace the risk of these potential liquidity crisis cycles. To do so with accuracy, 

we need to know the leverage and positions of the major market participants. No 

one firm, knowing only its own positions, can have an accurate assessment of the 

crisis risk. Indeed, each firm might be managing its risk prudently given the information it has at its disposal, and not only miss the risk that comes from crowding 

and leverage, but also unwittingly contribute to this risk. Gathering these critical 

data is the first step in measuring and managing crisis risk. This should be the role 

of a market regulator.10
62

to the Financial System,’’ October 2, 2007, and Testimony of Richard Bookstaber, Submitted to 

the Senate of the United States, Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on 

Securities, Insurance and Investment, for the Hearing: ‘‘Risk Management and Its Implications 

for Systematic Risk,’’ June 19, 2008. 11This is especially true when one considers the business of the banks, which is to package 

the securities and sell them. The growth of inventory was outside the normal business of the 

banks. That the securities were not moving out the door should have been an immediate indication they were not correctly priced. 12 Indeed, in some important cases, VaR was not even employed in the risk process. A case 

in point is the ‘super senior’ mortgage CDO positions which caused huge trading losses at a 

number of banks. There is a common misconception that regulatory capital for trading assets 

is automatically computed using VaR. In fact, trading assets are eligible for VaR-based capital 

only if the bank can demonstrate to its supervisor that its model is robust. Absent this, a coarser method is applied. Many of the highly complex securities at the heart of the recent crisis 

were not regarded as being suitable for VaR treatment, and received a simpler ratings-based 

treatment, which proved to severely underestimate the capital required to support the assets. 13 I believe coarse measures—measures that are not fine tuned to be ideal in any one environment, but are robust across many environments—are a key to good risk management. 14The Leverage Ratio is the ratio of Tier 1 capital, principally equity and retained earnings, 

to total assets. 15The Leverage Ratio is inconsistent with Basel II because it is not sensitive to the riskiness 

of balance sheet assets and it does not capture off-balance sheet risks. By not taking the relative 

risk of assets into account, it could lead to incentives for banks to hold riskier assets, while on 

a relative basis penalizing those banks that elect to hold a low-risk balance sheet. In terms of 

risk to a financial institution, the time horizon of leverage is also important, which the Leverage 

Ratio also misses. The problems with Bear Stearns and Lehman was not only one of leverage 

per se, but of funding a sizable portion of leverage in the short-term repo market. They thus 

were vulnerable to funding drying up in the face of a crisis. 

The Role of VaR in the Current Crisis 

The above discussion provides part of the answer to the question of the role of 

VaR in the current market crisis: If VaR was used as the source of risk measurement, and thus as the determinant of risk capital, then it missed the potential for 

the current crisis for the simple reason that VaR is not constructed to deal with crisis risk. And if VaR was applied as if it actually reflected the potential for crisis, 

that is, if it was forgotten that VaR is only useful insofar as the future is drawn 

from the same distribution as the past, then this led to the mis-measurement of 

risk. So if VaR was the sole means of determining risk levels and risk capital coming into this crisis, it was misused. But this does not present the full story. 

Whatever the limitations of VaR models, they were not the key culprits in the 

case of the multi-billion dollar write-downs during the crisis. The large bank inventories were there to be seen; no models or detective work were needed. Furthermore, 

it was clear the inventories were illiquid and their market values uncertain.11 It is 

hard to understand how this elephant in the room was missed, how a risk manager 

could see inventory grow from a few billion dollars to ten billion dollars and then 

to thirty or forty billion dollars and not react by forcing that inventory to be brought 

down. 

Of course, if these inventories were not properly included in the VaR analysis, the 

risk embodied by these positions would have been missed, but one has to look beyond VaR, to culprits such as sheer stupidity or collective management failure: The 

risk managers missed the growing inventory, or did not have the courage of their 

conviction to insist on its reduction, or the senior management was not willing to 

heed their demands. Whichever the reason, VaR was not central to this crisis.12

Focus would be better placed on failures in risk governance than failures of risk 

models. 

Summary: VaR and Crisis Risk 

There are two approaches for moving away from over-reliance on VaR. 

The first approach is to employ coarser measures of risk, measures that have 

fewer assumptions and that are less dependent on the future looking like the past.13

The use of the Leverage Ratio mandated by U.S. regulators and championed by the 

FDIC is an example of such a measure.14 The leverage ratio does not overlay assumptions about the correlation or the volatility of the assets, and does not assume 

any mitigating effect from diversification, although it has its own limitations as a 

basis for capital adequacy.15

The second approach is to recognize that while VaR provides a guide to risk in 

some situations, it must be enhanced with other measures that are better at illuminating the areas it does not reach. For example, Pillar II of Basel II has moved 

to include stress cases for crises and defaults into its risk capital process. So in addition to measuring risk using a standard VaR approach, firms must develop sce-
63

16Knight makes the distinction between risks we can identify and measure and those that 

are unanticipatable and therefore not measurable in Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit. (1921), Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. 17For example, even beyond the insights to be gained from a detailed knowledge of firm-byfirm leverage and market crowding, there are some characteristics of market crisis that can be 

placed into a general scenario. When a crisis occurs, equity prices drop, credit spreads rise, and 

the volatility of asset returns increases. The yield curve flattens and gold prices rise. Furthermore, the correlation between individual equities rises, as does the correlation between equities 

and corporate bonds. The riskier and less liquid assets fare more poorly, so, for example, emerging markets take a differentially bigger hit than their G–7 cousins. More broadly, anything that 

is risky or less liquid becomes more common and negative in its return; the subtleties of pricing 

between assets becomes overshadowed by the assets’ riskiness. However, short-term interest 

rates and commodity prices are less predictable; in some cases, such as in the case of the inflation-laden crisis of 1973–1974, they rise, while in other cases, such as in the current crisis, they 

drop.

Each of these effects can occur with a ferocity far beyond what is seen in normal times, so if 

these crisis events are overlaid on the distribution coming out of the VaR model based on those 

normal times one will come away saying the crisis is a 100-year flood event, a twenty standard 

deviation event, a black swan. But it is none of these things. It is a financial crisis, and such 

crises occur frequently enough that to be understood without such shock and awe. 18Financial firms will be justifiably reticent to have their position and leverage information 

made public, so the collection and analysis of the data will have to reside securely in the regulator. 19With these data, the regulator is also in a position to run risk analysis independent of the 

firms. Under Basel II, the regulator still depends on the internal processes of the banks for the 

measurement of risk and the resulting capital requirements.

narios for crises and test their capital adequacy under those scenarios. Critical to 

the success of this approach is the ability to ferret out potential crises and describe 

them adequately for risk purposes. 

This means that for crisis-related stress testing to be feasible, we first must believe that it is indeed possible to model financial crisis scenarios, i.e., that crises are 

not ‘black swans.’ This is not to say that surprises do not occur. Though recently 

popularized, the recognition that we are beset by unanticipatable risk, by events 

that seemingly come out of nowhere and catch us unawares, has a long history in 

economics and finance, dating back to Frank Knight in the 1920s.16 The best defense against such risks is to maintain a coarse, simple and robust financial structure. Rather than fine-tuning for the current environments, we need risk measures 

and financial instruments which, while perhaps not optimal for the world of today, 

will be able to operate reasonably if the world changes in unexpected ways. VaR 

as currently structured is not such a risk measure. 

However, although surprises do occur, crisis scenarios are not wholly 

unanticipatable; they are not in the realm of Knightian uncertainty. We have had 

ample experience with financial crises. We know a thing or two about them.17 And 

we can further anticipate crisis risk by amassing data on the positions and leverage 

of the large investment firms. The regulator is best suited to take on this task, because these are data that no one firm can or should fully see.18 With these critical 

data we will be better able to measure the crowding and leverage that lead to liquidity crisis cycles and begin to shed light on the areas of financial risk that fail 

to be illuminated by VaR.19
64

Appendix 

Related Blog Posts on VaR and Risk Management 

The Fat-Tailed Straw Man 

See http://rick.bookstaber.com/2009/03/fat-tailed-straw-man.html

My Time article about the quant meltdown of August, 2007 started with ‘‘Looks 

like Wall Street’s mad scientists have blown up the lab again.’’ Articles on Wall 

Street’s mad scientist blowing up the lab seem to come out every month in one 

major publication or another. The New York Times has a story along these lines 

today and had a similar story in January. 

There is a constant theme in these articles, invariably including a quote from 

Nassim Taleb, that quants generally, and quantitative risk managers specifically, 

missed the boat by thinking, despite all evidence to the contrary, that security returns can be modeled by a Normal distribution. 

This is a straw man argument. It is an attack on something that no one believes. 

Is there anyone well trained in quantitative methods working on Wall Street who 

does not know that security returns have fat tails? It is discussed in most every investment text book. Fat tails are apparent—even if we ignore periods of crisis—in 

daily return series. And historically, every year there is some market or other that 

has suffered a ten standard deviation move of the ‘‘where did that come from’’ variety. I am firmly in the camp of those who understand there are unanticipatable 

risks; as far back as an article I co-authored in 1985, I have argued for the need 

to recognize that we face uncertainty from the unforeseeable. To get an idea of how 

far back the appreciation of this sort of risk goes in economic thought, consider the 

fact that it is sometimes referred to as Knightian uncertainty. 

Is there any risk manager who does not understand that VaR will not capture 

the risk of market crises and regime changes? The conventional VaR methods are 

based on historical data, and so will only be an accurate view of risk if tomorrow 

is drawn from the same population as the sample it uses. VaR is not perfect, it cannot do everything. But if we understand its flaws—and every professional risk manager does—then it is a useful guide for day-to-day market risk. If you want to add 

fat tails, fine. But as I will explain below, that is not the solution. 

So, then, why is there so much currency given to a criticism of something that 

no one believes in the first place? 

It is because quant methods sometimes fail. We can quibble with whether ‘sometimes’ should be replaced with ‘often’ or ‘frequently’ or ‘every now and again,’ but 

we all know they are not perfect. We are not, after all, talking about physics, about 

timeless and universal laws of the universe when we deal with securities. Weird 

stuff happens. And the place where the imperfection is most telling is in risk management. 

When the risk manager misses the equivalent of a force five hurricane, we ask 

what is wrong with his methods. By definition, what he missed was a ten or twenty 

standard deviation event, so we tell him he ignored fat tails. There you have it, you 

failed because you did not incorporate fat tails. This is tautological. If I miss a large 

risk—which will occur on occasion even if I am fully competent; that is why they 

are called risks—I will have failed to account for a fat tailed event. I can tell you 

that ahead of time. I can tell you now—as can everyone in risk management—that 

I will miss something. If after the fact you want to castigate me for not incorporating sufficiently fat tailed events, let the flogging begin. 

I remember a cartoon that showed a man sitting behind a desk with a name plate 

that read ‘risk manager.’ The man sitting in front of the desk said, ‘‘Be careful? 

That’s all you can tell me, is to be careful?’’ Observing that extreme events can occur 

in the markets is about as useful as saying ‘‘be careful.’’ We all know they will 

occur. And once they have occurred, we will all kick ourselves and our risk managers and our models, and ask ‘‘how could we have missed that?’’

The flaw comes in the way we answer that question, a question that can be stated 

more analytically as ‘‘what are the dynamics of the market that we failed to incorporate.’’ If we answer by throwing our hands into the air and saying, ‘‘well, who 

knows, I guess that was one of them there ten standard deviation events,’’ or ‘‘what 

do you expect; that’s fat tails for you,’’ we will be in the same place when the next 

crisis arrives. If instead we build our models with fatter and fatter tailed distributions, so that after the event we can say, ‘‘see, what did I tell you, there was one 

of those fat tailed events that I postulated in my model,’’ or ‘‘see, I told you to be 

careful,’’ does that count for progress? 
65

So, to recap, we all know that there are fat tails; it doesn’t do any good to state 

the mantra over and over again that securities do not follow a Normal distribution. 

Really, we all get it. We should be constructive in trying to move risk management 

beyond the point of simply noting that there are fat tails, beyond admonitions like 

‘‘hey, you know, shit happens, so be careful.’’ And that means understanding the dynamics that create the fat tails, in particular, that lead to market crisis and unexpected linkages between markets. 

What are these dynamics? 

One of them, which I have written about repeatedly, is the liquidity crisis cycle. 

An exogenous shock occurs in a highly leveraged market, and the resulting forced 

selling leads to a cascading cycle downward in prices. This then propagates to other 

markets as those who need to liquidate find the market that is under pressure no 

longer can support their liquidity needs. Thus there is contagion based not on economic linkages, but based on who is under pressure and what else they are holding. 

This cycle evolves unrelated to historical relationships, out of the reach of VaR-types 

of models, but that does not mean it is beyond analysis. 

Granted it is not easy to trace the risk of these potential liquidity crisis cycles. 

To do so with accuracy, we need to know the leverage and positions of the market 

participants. In my previous post, ‘‘Mapping the Market Genome,’’ I argued that this 

should be the role of a market regulator. But even absent that level of detail, perhaps we can get some information indirectly from looking at market flows. 

No doubt there are other dynamics that lead to the fat tailed events currently 

frustrating our efforts to manage risk in the face of market crises. We need to move 

beyond the fat-tail critiques and the ‘be careful’ mantra to discover and analyze 

them.

The Myth of Non-correlation 

See http://rick.bookstaber.com/2007/09/myth-of-noncorrelation.html

[This is a modified version of an article I wrote that appeared in the September, 

2007 issue of Institutional Investor.]

With the collapse of the U.S. sub-prime market and the after-shocks that have 

been felt in credit and equity markets, there has been a lot of talk about fat tails, 

20 standard deviation moves and 100-year event. We seem to hear such descriptions 

fairly frequently, which suggests that maybe all the talk isn’t really about 100-year 

events after all. Maybe it is more a reflection of investors’ market views than it is 

of market reality. 

No market veteran should be surprised to see periods when securities prices move 

violently. The recent rise in credit spreads is nothing compared to what happened 

in 1998 leading up to and following the collapse of hedge fund Long-Term Capital 

Management or, for that matter, during the junk bond crisis earlier that decade, 

when spreads quadrupled. 

What catches many investors off guard and leads them to make the ‘‘100 year’’ 

sort of comment is not the behavior of individual markets, but the concurrent big 

and unexpected moves among markets. It’s the surprising linkages that suddenly 

appear between markets that should not have much to do with one other and the 

failed linkages between those that should march in tandem. That is, investors are 

not as dumbfounded when volatility skyrockets as when correlations go awry. This 

may be because investors depend on correlation for hedging and diversifying. And 

nothing hurts more than to think you are well hedged and then to discover you are 

not hedged at all.

Surprising Market Linkages 

Correlations between markets, however, can shift wildly and in unanticipated 

ways—and usually at the worst possible time, when there is a crisis with volatility 

that is out of hand. To see this, think back on some of the unexpected correlations 

that have haunted us in earlier market crises:

• The 1987 stock market crash. During the crash, Wall Street junk bond trading 

desks that had been using Treasury bonds as a hedge were surprised to find 

that their junk bonds tanked while Treasuries strengthened. They had the 

double whammy of losing on the junk bond inventory and on the hedge as 

well. The reason for this is easy to see in retrospect: Investors started to look 

at junk bonds more as stock-like risk than as interest rate vehicles while 

Treasuries became a safe haven during the flight to quality and so were bid 

up.

• The 1997 Asian crisis. The financial crisis that started in July 1997 with the 

collapse of the Thai baht sank equity markets across Asia and ended up en-
66

veloping Brazil as well. Emerging-markets fund managers who thought they 

had diversified portfolios—and might have inched up their risk accordingly—

found themselves losing on all fronts. The reason was not that these markets 

had suddenly become economically linked with Brazil, but rather that the 

banks that were in the middle of the crisis, and that were being forced to reduce leverage, could not do so effectively in the illiquid Asian markets, so 

they sold off other assets, including sizable holdings in Brazil.

• The fall of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. When the LTCM crisis 

hit, volatility shot up everywhere, as would be expected. Everywhere, that is, 

but Germany. There, the implied volatility dropped to near historical lows. 

Not coincidentally, it was in Germany that LTCM and others had sizable long 

volatility bets; as they closed out of those positions, the derivatives they held 

dropped in price, and the implied volatility thus dropped as well. Chalk one 

up for the adage that markets move to inflict the most pain.

And now we get to the crazy markets of August 2007. Stresses in a minor part 

of the mortgage market—so minor that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben 

Bernanke testified before Congress in March that the impact of the problem had 

been ‘‘moderate’’—break out not only to affect other mortgages but also to widen 

credit spreads worldwide. And from there, sub-prime somehow links to the equity 

markets. Stock market volatility doubles, the major indexes tumble by 10 percent 

and, most improbable of all, a host of quantitative equity hedge funds—which use 

computer models to try scrupulously to be market neutral—are hit by a ‘‘100-year’’ 

event. 

When we see this sort of thing happening, our not very helpful reaction is to 

shake our heads as if we are looking over a fender bender and point the finger at 

statistical anomalies like fat tails, 100-year events, black swans, or whatever. This 

doesn’t add much to the discourse or to our ultimate understanding. It is just more 

sophisticated ways of saying we just lost a lot of money and were caught by surprise. Instead of simply stating the obvious, that big and unanticipated events occur, 

we need to try to understand the source of these surprising events. I believe that 

the unexpected shifts in correlation are caused by the same elements I point to in 

my book as the major cause of market crises: complexity and tight coupling.

Complexity 

Complexity means that an event can propagate in nonlinear and unanticipated 

ways. An example of a complex system from the realm of engineering is the operation of a nuclear power plant, where a minor event like a clogged pressure-release 

valve (as occurred at Three Mile Island) or a shift in the combination of steam production and fuel temperature (as at Chernobyl) can cascade into a meltdown. 

For financial markets, complexity is spelled d-e-r-i-v-a-t-i-v-e-s. Many derivatives 

have nonlinear payoffs, so that a small move in the market might lead to a small 

move in the price of the derivative in one instance and to a much larger move in 

the price in another. Many derivatives also lead to unexpected and sometimes unnatural linkages between instruments and markets. Thanks to collateralized debt 

obligations, this is what is at the root of the first leg of the contagion we observed 

from the sub-prime market. Sub-primes were included in various CDOs, as were 

other types of mortgages and corporate bonds. Like a kid who brings his cold to a 

birthday party, the sickly sub-prime mortgages mingled with these other instruments. 

The result can be unexpected higher correlation. Investors that have to reduce 

their derivatives exposure or hedge their exposure by taking positions in the underlying bonds will look at them as part of a CDO. It doesn’t matter if one of the underlying bonds is issued by a AA-rated energy company and another by a BB financial; 

the bonds in a given package will move in lockstep. And although sub-prime happens to be the culprit this time around, any one of the markets involved in the CDO 

packaging could have started things off.

Tight Coupling 

Tight coupling is a term I have borrowed from systems engineering. A tightly coupled process progresses from one stage to the next with no opportunity to intervene. 

If things are moving out of control, you can’t pull an emergency lever and stop the 

process while a committee convenes to analyze the situation. Examples of tightly 

coupled processes include a space shuttle launch, a nuclear power plant moving toward criticality and even something as prosaic as bread baking. 

In financial markets tight coupling comes from the feedback between mechanistic 

trading, price changes and subsequent trading based on the price changes. The 
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mechanistic trading can result from a computer-based program or contractual requirements to reduce leverage when things turn bad. 

In the ’87 crash tight coupling arose from the computer-based trading of those 

running portfolio insurance programs. On Monday, October 19, in response to a 

nearly 10 percent drop in the U.S. market the previous week, these programs triggered a flood of trades to sell futures to increase the hedge. As those trades hit the 

market, prices dropped, feeding back to the computers, which ordered yet more 

rounds of trading. 

More commonly, tight coupling comes from leverage. When things start to go 

badly for a highly leveraged fund and its collateral drops to the point that it no 

longer has enough assets to meet margin calls, its manager has to start selling assets. This drops prices, so the collateral declines further, forcing yet more sales. The 

resulting downward cycle is exactly what we saw with the demise of LTCM. 

And it gets worse. Just like complexity, the tight coupling born of leverage can 

lead to surprising linkages between markets. High leverage in one market can end 

up devastating another, unrelated, perfectly healthy market. This happens when a 

market under stress becomes illiquid and fund managers must look to other markets: If you can’t sell what you want to sell, you sell what you can. This puts pressure on markets that have nothing to do with the original problem, other than that 

they happened to be home to securities held by a fund in trouble. Now other highly 

leveraged funds with similar exposure in these markets are forced to sell, and the 

cycle continues. This may be how the sub-prime mess expanded beyond mortgages 

and credit markets to end up stressing quantitative equity hedge funds, funds that 

had nothing to do with sub-prime mortgages. 

All of this means that investors cannot put too much stock in correlations. If you 

depend on diversification or hedges to keep risks under control, then when it matters most it may not work.

BIOGRAPHY FOR RICHARD BOOKSTABER

Richard Bookstaber has worked in some of the largest buy-side and sell-side 

firms, in capacities ranging from risk management to portfolio management to derivatives research. 

Over the past decade he has worked as a risk manager at Bridgewater Associates 

in Westport, Connecticut, Moore Capital Management and Ziff Brothers Investments. He also ran the FrontPoint Quantitative Fund, a market neutral long/short 

equity fund, at FrontPoint Partners. 

From 1994 through 1998, Mr. Bookstaber was the Managing Director in charge 

of firm-wide risk management at Salomon Brothers. In this role he oversaw both 

the client and proprietary risk-taking activities of the firm, and served on that 

firm’s powerful Risk Management Committee. He remained in these positions at 

Salomon Smith Barney after the firm’s purchase by Traveler’s and the merger that 

formed Citigroup. 

Before joining Salomon, Mr. Bookstaber spent ten years at Morgan Stanley in 

quantitative research and as a proprietary trader. He also marketed and managed 

portfolio hedging programs as a fiduciary at Morgan Stanley Asset Management. 

With the creation of Morgan Stanley’s risk management division, he was appointed 

as the Firm’s first Director of Market Risk Management. 

He is the author of four books and scores of articles on finance topics ranging from 

option theory to risk management. He has received various awards for his research, 

including the Graham and Dodd Scroll from the Financial Analysts Federation and 

the Roger F. Murray Award from the Institute of Quantitative Research in Finance. 

Mr. Bookstaber’s most recent book is A Demon of Our Own Design—Markets, 

Hedge Funds and the Perils of Financial Innovation (Wiley, 2007). 

He received a Ph.D. in economics from MIT.

DISCUSSION

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. We will now have 

rounds of questions of five minutes for each Member, and I will 

begin by recognizing myself for five minutes. 

CAN ECONOMIC EVENTS BE PREDICTED? 

Dr. Bookstaber, what you just described, what I have heard you 

describe as gaming, I have heard celebrated on the Financial Serv-
68

ices Committee, on which I also serve, as innovation—that a lot of 

innovation seems to be simply a way to evade existing regulations. 

And I think both of you got it—Dr. Bookstaber, in that last bit of 

testimony you certainly got at it, but the supporters of the VaR 

now they say want a do-over, that the VaR model was perhaps 

flawed but it can be fixed, and they can now develop a more reliable model that will predict fat tail events, the unlikely events. Do 

you think that it is a failure of that model, or do you think the failure is in the idea that economic events can be predicted with the 

same precision that the movement of the planets can be predicted? 

Do you think that it is inherently flawed to think that we can develop models that will be unfailingly reliable? Dr. Taleb. 

Dr. TALEB. This is my life story. From the beginning—and I 

heard, Dr. Bookstaber and I share a lot of opinions, you know, on 

things like gaming, like the numbers that are going to be gamed 

on the interaction between model and participants. However, there 

are two things or three things that I heavily disagree with, and the 

first one is, he said that we can use different distribution to model 

tail events. Well, that is the story of my life. This is why I provided 

this paper forthcoming in which I look at 20 million pieces of data, 

every single economic variable I could find, and tried to see if there 

is regularity in the data helping to predict itself, you know, outside 

that sample from which it was derived. Unfortunately, it is impossible, and that is my first argument, that the more remote the 

event, the less we can predict it, and that’s my first point. And the 

second one is, we know which variables are more unpredictable 

than others, and it is very easy to protect against that. And the 

third one is that I agree with Dr. Bookstaber; if I were, you know, 

an omnipotent person seeing all the leverage and everything in the 

system, and equipped with heavy, you know, equations, I could 

probably figure it out. However, this is Soviet-style thinking, that 

someone, some regulator, some unit out there can see what is going 

on and be able to model it, because unfortunately when we model 

in complex systems, we have non-linearity. Even if I gave you all 

the data and you missed something by $1 million, okay—your probabilities will change markedly. 

Chairman MILLER. I will get to you, Dr. Bookstaber, but your solution then is just higher liquidity requirements? 

Dr. TALEB. No, my solution is figuring out—it is very simple. I 

was a trader in the 1980s. There were some products we could really risk manage on a napkin. Options, instruments, futures, all 

these we could risk manage on a napkin. Once we started having 

these toxic products—to me, the sole purpose of these products is 

to create bonuses, like complex derivatives. I was a complex derivatives trader. I have a textbook on complex derivatives, and I tell 

you, these products, okay, can hide massive amounts of tail risks. 

They are not needed for anyone. A lot of these products should not 

be there. If you eliminate some of the products, some of the exposure, it would not change anything to economic life and it would 

make things a lot more measurable. So my solution is to ban some 

products that have a toxic exposure to tail events. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Bookstaber. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. Let me just correct one point. I do not advocate 

trying to fix VaR by fattening the tails. I am simply arguing that 
69

some people make that as a suggestion. I think VaR is what it is, 

it does what it does, and the best thing to do is recognize the limitations of VaR, which I stated, and use it for what it is good for 

but not try to oversell it, not to think that it represents all possible 

risk, because any attempts to somehow make it more sophisticated 

are just going to obfuscate it all the more. So you take VaR as one 

tool for risk management, and then extend out from there. 

The second point, just addressing what you are saying, is that, 

number one, I don’t think that you can use VaR and have a ‘doover’ to try to expand it and have it solve these crisis-type problems. I also don’t think that we will ever be at the point of being 

able to know all the risks. But I do think that we can move somewhat in the direction of understanding crisis risk more. But to do 

it, you need the data, and the data that you really need to start 

with is: how highly leveraged are the people in the market, and 

what are their positions—so that if there is a shock in a particular 

market, will there be so much leverage there that people will be 

forced to liquidate? What other positions do they have, so how 

could that propagate out? It is not a panacea. You can’t have a silver bullet because of the feedback and gaming capabilities but I 

think you can move more in the direction of dealing with these crisis risks. 

REGULATION OF FINANCIAL PRODUCTS

Chairman MILLER. My time has expired but I have a question 

that is sort of in hot pursuit of what you both just said, and I will 

be similarly indulgent to the other Members here. 

Dr. Taleb, you said there should be something like a Food and 

Drug Administration (FDA) to look at financial products, to see if 

they actually do something useful, or if they simply create additional risks that create short-term profits. Apparently about 90 percent of derivatives—I was only half kidding when I asked you if 

your mother knew you designed derivatives. But in about 90 percent of derivatives, no party to the transaction has any interest in 

the underlying, whatever it was, that the derivative is derived 

from—credit default swaps. Do you agree that some financial products should simply be banned as having no readily discernible usefulness, utility for society, for the economy—and creating a risk 

that we cannot begin to understand? Should credit default swaps 

be banned? Should they be limited to—have a requirement that is 

equivalent to an insurable interest requirement in insurance law? 

Dr. Taleb or Dr. Bookstaber? 

Dr. TALEB. I cannot—I don’t—I am not into regulation to know 

whether we should be allowed to ban people based on uses but—

based on risk, okay, because society doesn’t bear the risk. I have 

here what I call the ‘fourth quadrant,’ and we should ban financial 

products—and when I call it the fourth, it is a little technical, but 

it is a very simple rule of thumb that takes minutes to check if a 

given financial product belongs or doesn’t belong to the fourth 

quadrant. In other words, does it have any explosive toxic effects 

on either the user or the issuer, or both, you know, so it is very 

easy. So these products—and this is how I have my fourth quadrant—these are the exposures we should not just compute, you 

know, but eliminate. And there are a lot of things we can measure. 
70

I mean, I may agree with Dr. Bookstaber, VaR may work for some 

products, and we know which ones, but not for these products that 

have open-ended, toxic, geometric—what I call geometric—in other 

words, escalating payoffs. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Bookstaber. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. For reference, I refer the Committee to testimony that I gave in June to the Agricultural Committee of the Senate on the topic of derivatives, and there I pointed out that, over 

time, derivatives have moved more and more towards being used 

for gaming. In fact, I said that derivatives are the weapon of choice 

for gaming the system. They are used to allow you to hedge when 

you are not supposed to hedge, to avoid taxes, to lever when you 

are not supposed to lever. There is vested interest on both the sell 

and the buy side to have derivatives that are complex and obfuscating, that are customized. I believe, number one, that many derivative instruments that exist today are used more for either gaming or gambling purposes as opposed to having true economic function. And I believe that there are many customized and complex instruments that could easily be transformed into a set of standardized instruments that would be easier to track, more transparent, 

and possibly even put on an exchange. So I certainly agree with the 

concept that derivatives is a point to focus on, because it is one of 

the ways that we find risk coming in these tail events in surprising 

ways. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you, Dr. Bookstaber. 

I now recognize Dr. Broun for nine minutes and 45 seconds. 

‘TOO BIG TO FAIL’? 

Mr. BROUN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to make a quick 

statement. I believe, first thing, that there is no such thing as an 

entity that is too big to fail, particularly when we look at businesses, even large businesses such as the investment banks, and 

I believe in holding people personally accountable and responsible, 

and I believe that when you take away the taxpayer safety net that 

people are utilizing to gamble away other people’s future, then people will be held more accountable and will make better decisions. 

I think greed and lust are two tremendous blinding factors when 

people start making decisions. 

Having said that, I also want to state that I think that there 

were a lot of warning signs about this current economic crisis that 

we found ourselves in, and many people sounded the horn of warning saying that we needed to change federal law and regulation to 

prevent what has happened, and those warnings were unheeded by 

Congress and by people who were in the decision-making process. 

Having said that, I am real concerned too because investment 

banks took excessive risk based on these models and commercial 

banks are also now forced to rein in risk, even though they are not 

taking risky positions to begin with, those commercial banks. What 

can we do to ensure that small commercial banks around the country are not punished by the risky behavior of large investment 

banks? Either or both, who wants to go first? 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. That is a difficult question, and I don’t know 

that I can illuminate it too much, but I can go in a particular direction. You can correct me if I am going the wrong way. I think there 
71

is a distinction between the larger banks, which de facto actually 

are the investment banks, and the smaller banks, because the larger banks end up quasi-market makers in the sense that they take 

on positions of risk for clients. They become market makers in the 

fixed-income market. They issue and support derivatives. They also 

have proprietary trading desks so they are also quasi-hedge funds. 

So I think you can look at the various functions of banks, and look 

at smaller banks, and they typically have a pure banking function. 

Larger banks are not really just bigger versions of smaller banks. 

They are actually institutions that take different types of risk that 

smaller banks don’t take, that can have some of these tail events 

of their own creation—that are demons of their own design—that 

they have created because they have elected to go into the derivatives markets, or take market-making functions. 

So I think the question for a regulator is, do you have a different 

set of regulations and requirements for the banks that—it is not 

an issue of being too big to fail, but banks that are taking on types 

of risk that make them distinct from their smaller cousins. 

Mr. BROUN. Isn’t it greed that drives that as far as the large institutions, though? 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. Well, you know, greed has a little bit of spin 

to it. I mean, there are incentives, and people act based on their 

incentives; and if we give somebody a set of incentives that, as Dr. 

Taleb has mentioned, lead them to say, ‘I want to take risks which 

might blow the bank up, with small probability, but with very high 

probability will give me a large bonus,’ you are going to have people acting accordingly. So I think the way to think of it is, not that 

they are acting on the basis of greed, but they are acting on the 

basis of incentives that lead to behavior that, for the market overall, may be unduly risky. 

Mr. BROUN. Isn’t it so particularly when you have somebody else 

who is going to be held responsible for that decision-making process? 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. Right. 

Mr. BROUN. Like the taxpayer is going to be on the hook if they 

make a bad decision. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. That is right. There is no doubt that incentives 

have played a large role in what we have observed. You know, had 

you had, for example, somebody like Mr. Prince saying—apparently 

recognizing the riskiness of what they are doing—and saying, well, 

as long as the music is playing, we are going to keep dancing. Why 

is he going to keep dancing? Because his incentive is based on next 

quarter’s earnings, and he can’t walk away from that dance floor 

while his competitors are still on it, because his incentives are 

structured to make that incorrect decision. 

Mr. BROUN. And he has everything to gain and nothing to lose 

in that process, correct? 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. Yes. 

Mr. BROUN. Dr. Taleb. 

Dr. TALEB. Yes. Well, I just wrote a paper with my colleague 

(Charles Tapiero) in which we showed why—I don’t know if you 

have heard about the case of Socie ́te ́ Generale, the French bank 

that lost $7 billion, $8 billion on a rogue trader, and we showed 

that it came from too big a size. Size has effect in compounding 
72

risk, and let me give you the intuition. If you have a bank a tenth 

of the size of Socie ́te ́ Generale, and they had a rogue trader that 

had a tenth of the size of the position of that rogue trader, the 

losses would have been close to zero. The fact that they had to liquidate, they discovered that that rogue trader had 50 billion euros 

in hidden position and they had to liquidate that, and liquidating 

50 billion euros rapidly costs a lot more than liquidating five billion 

euros. You liquidate five billion euros at no transaction cost almost, 

or a very small transaction cost, compared to liquidating 50 billion. 

So that would generalize to risks of unexpected events tend to affect large size more. 

And I have here another comment to make about banks. Banks, 

of course, have done so far—I mean, we have evidence they have 

done, so far, very little for society, except generate bonuses for 

themselves, from the data, and that is not from recent events that 

I am deriving that. When I wrote ‘‘The Black Swan’’ it was before 

these events. But look at hedge funds. Hedge funds, I heard the 

number, 1,800 hedge fund failed in the last episode. I don’t know 

if many of them made the front page of any Washington paper. So 

the hedge funds seem to be taking risks without endangering society, or at least not taxpayers directly. And this model of hedge fund 

corresponds to my norm, okay—what is a complex system that is 

robust? The best one is Mother Nature. Mother Nature has a lot 

of interdependence. We have an ecosystem, a lot of interdependence. But if you went and shot the largest mammal, a whale, or 

the largest land mammal, an elephant, you would not destroy the 

ecosystem. If you shot Lehman Brothers, well, you know what happened, okay. You destroyed the system—too much interdependence 

means you should not have large units. But hedge funds have 

shown us the way to go. They are born and they die every day, literally every day. Today I am sure that many hedge funds are born 

and many hedge funds have died. So this is a model that replicates 

how nature works with interdependence. But of course we have to 

listen to Dr. Bookstaber’s advice to make sure that they don’t all 

have the same positions you have to put the exclusionary system, 

but they have a lot more diversity than banks. 

WALL STREET’S DEPENDENCY ON GOVERNMENT BAILOUTS

Mr. BROUN. Isn’t it though that the implied or even outright 

safety net of the taxpayers picking up the pieces if there is a failure, isn’t that the thing that is driving the derivatives and all these 

other complex financial instruments that cause people to make 

these risky behavior judgments? 

Dr. TALEB. Well, I am under oath and I will say exactly something that I want to be on the record. I was a trader for 21 years, 

and every time I said what if we blow up, he said, who cares, the 

government bails us out. And I heard that so many times throughout my career, that, ‘‘don’t worry about extreme risks, worry about 

down five percent, ten percent, don’t worry about extreme risks, 

they are not your problem anymore, it is not our problem.’’ I heard 

that so many times, and here I am under oath and I say it. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. If I may add to that, there is the notion, well 

known, of what is called the trader’s option. The trader’s option is, 

I get X percent of the upside and limited or zero of the downside, 
73

but that trader’s option extends also in many cases to the management of the firms. They get the upside and so you would much 

rather, you know, construct a position that makes a little, makes 

a little, makes a little and makes a little and with small probability 

loses everything, because that increases the chance that you have 

consistent earnings, consistent bonuses, and in the extreme events, 

your downside is limited because of the option characteristic of 

your compensation. 

Mr. BROUN. So in the ten seconds I have left, I just want to state 

that taking away the government safety net is going to make people more responsible and they will make better decisions on a real 

risk management basis, and I thank you all. It is my opinion that 

that is what I am getting from you all, correct? 

Dr. TALEB. In my opinion as well. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. If I may, I would just say, it is not just the 

safety net. If I am an individual in a firm, I don’t care about the 

safety net, I care about my own bonus, so with or without the safety net for the firm overall, if my incentives are, I make money if 

things go up, I get a new job if things blow up, I don’t know that 

the safety net matters to me personally. 

Dr. TALEB. May I respond to this point? 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Taleb. 

Dr. TALEB. I agree that if I am a trader, I don’t care who is going 

to bail me out. The problem is that the shareholders don’t care 

when society can bail them out because there is unlimited liability, 

that shareholders are protected so society bears the rest. So we 

have three layers: a trader, the shareholder and thirdly, society. So 

in the end, the free option comes from society. 

Mr. BROUN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

I think something like 90 percent of American households have 

a household income of less than $105,000 a year, so for a trader 

to make $100 million, $120 million does not seem like make a little, lose a lot. 

Ms. Dahlkemper for five minutes. 

Ms. DAHLKEMPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I wanted to go back to your statement in terms of some—that 

maybe some financial products should be banned, and there are 

some that may argue that banning any financial product is an excessive intrusion into the free market. So if you could just give me 

your response to that claim. 

Dr. TALEB. I believe in free markets but I do not believe in state 

socialism, okay, and I don’t believe—I believe the situation we have 

had so far is not free markets. It is socialism for losses and capitalism for profits. So if the taxpayer is involved ultimately in bailing out, which the taxpayer should be able to say, I want this product or that product, the risk, okay? You know, my opinion, I am 

in favor of free markets but that is not my definition of free markets, okay, state-sponsored socialism for the losses and capitalism 

for the profit—I mean, free market for the profit. That I don’t—as 

a taxpayer, and I am paying taxes. 

Ms. DAHLKEMPER. Dr. Bookstaber. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. I think even in a capitalist system, the argument that some products should not go forward or should be 
74

banned is a reasonable one for the following reason: that if I construct some new product, and let us say it is a fairly complex product or has a fat tail and it can inflict problems for society, there 

is a negative externality to that product that is not priced—that is, 

I sell it, I create it, somebody wants to buy it, but the negative externality is the increased probability of crisis that it causes, and 

any time that you have a non-price-negative externality is a time 

that I think even a libertarian would argue you can have government intervention. 

THE RISKS OF DIFFERENT TUPES OF INSTITUTIONS

Ms. DAHLKEMPER. Thank you. I also wanted to go back a little 

bit to the ‘too big to fail’ subject in terms of the institutions. When 

we look at the surviving large banks, they are bigger than ever, so 

where do you know when an institution is ‘too big to fail’ and how 

do we restructure these firms? 

Dr. TALEB. ‘Too big to fail,’ you can see it. If anything in nature 

is bigger than an elephant, it won’t survive, and you can see, I am 

sure anything bigger than a large hedge fund, to me, is too big. But 

there is one thing here associated with the problem. The reason we 

depend so much on banks is because the economy has been overfinancialized over the past 25 years, over-financialized. The level of 

debt today in relation to GDP is three times, according to some 

numbers, even more or less, but three times the level of debt to 

GDP that we had in the 1980s. So that is rather worrisome. This 

is why we have ‘too big’ banks, all right, because it comes with the 

system. It is a process, you know, that feeds on itself, that is a recursive process. And if we definancialize the economy more, the 

debt level will come down. Then the discussion about ‘too big to 

fail,’ about banks, will be less relevant. I mean, banks’ role is not 

so—you know, banks where I can withdraw money when, you 

know, when I go to Atlanta and then there is a bank that is used 

for letter of credit, very useful things for society. And there are 

banks that trade for speculative reason, banks that issue paper 

that nobody needs and there are banks, the banking that corresponds to lending, you know, increased lending because a lender 

makes a bonus based on the size of loans. So if you brought this 

down, the size of banks would drop dramatically. Particularly, the 

balance sheets would shrink dramatically, and particularly if we 

moved the risk away from banks. The banks are more of a utility 

in the end, and they are hijacking us because a utility with a bonus 

structure, it doesn’t work. As I said here, don’t give someone managing a nuclear plant a bonus based on cost savings, okay, or based 

on profitability. You don’t, all right? So the problem is, they are hijacking us because of the dual function of a utility that we need 

them to have, a letter of credit or something as basic as withdrawing cash, and at the same time they take risks with bonuses. 

So if we brought down the level of banking, moved the risks more 

and more to hedge funds, these people are adults, they don’t endanger anyone, just make sure they don’t get big and have Dr. 

Bookstaber’s rules on, you know, leverage and stuff like that well 

enforced . . . then the level of—then that problem would disappear. So let us worry more about the cancer rather than worry 

about the symptoms. 
75

Ms. DAHLKEMPER. Dr. Bookstaber. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. You know, the Treasury came out with some 

principles for regulation of capital on September 3, and one of the 

key issues that they mentioned is dealing with ‘too big to fail.’ I 

think one of the difficulties is, I don’t think we can measure too big 

to fail. I don’t think we know. It is not just a matter of the capital 

that you have or the leverage that you have. For example, LTCM 

was a hedge fund and it was a relatively small firm and had $3 

billion capital, yet in a sense it was ‘too big to fail’ because it almost brought down, actually, Lehman along with it, and the Fed 

had to step in. What matters is how what you are doing weaves 

in with what other people, what other funds or firms are doing 

within the economy. So you could have a ‘too big to fail’ that is not 

predicated on one institution and what that institution is doing, 

but it could be based on some strategy or some new instrument, 

where for anyone from that instrument that strategy is relatively 

small, but if the exogenous shock occurs in the market and it affects that strategy, it affects so many firms in the same way that 

it has a substantial systemic effect. And I get back to the point that 

we don’t have the information to even know right now what type 

of positions or leverage or strategies might have that threading 

across different institutions. 

Ms. DAHLKEMPER. Thank you. My time is expired. 

Chairman MILLER. We are about to have 40 minutes of votes 

shortly so I would like for both Mr. Wilson and Mr. Grayson to 

have a chance to ask questions. I should just tell the panel that 

this Charlie Wilson has never had a movie made about him. So far 

as I know, he has never been in a hot tub. Mr. Wilson for five minutes. 

INCENTIVE STRUCTURES FOR TRADES

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, good morning. I serve on the Financial Services Committee also and I have to keep pinching myself that really I am in 

a Science and Technology Subcommittee and so it is hard to realize 

the conversations we are having. Dr. Taleb, if I could say that, you 

know, what you said earlier in your testimony about people not 

being concerned about the success or failure of a firm because they 

knew there would be a public bailout is frightening. That is certainly not the American way or certainly not the way we want to 

do business. With those things in mind, I have a couple questions 

I would like to ask and maybe we can get some of your feeling as 

to how people would get so far off track, that that would be the 

thought process. That concerns me. 

People have been outraged at the size of the bonuses and especially when we were doing the voting for the bailout. Some of the 

employees were bailed out, as you all know, with government 

money, huge amounts of money to the Wall Street firms. Much of 

the conversation was about firms being ‘too big to fail,’ and you say 

that in the bonuses, that is really the motivator for everybody. I 

would hate to think that there was no leadership that wouldn’t try 

to keep people on the right track rather than money being the only 

motivator, the true part of it. So can you explain that? And I was 
76

going to address this question, if I could, to Dr. Bookstaber if I 

could. 

Dr. TALEB. You would like me to explain how people were handling extreme risks. 

Mr. WILSON. I did. That was confusing. I am sorry. I did address 

that to you but I would be interested in Dr. Bookstaber also. If you 

would go first, Dr. Bookstaber, please. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. Thank you. I don’t think—I don’t mean to be 

cynical, but I don’t think that leadership within a financial firm 

can overcome the incentives that exist, incentives not just including 

the trader’s option, but to do the bidding of the people who have 

put you in your position, namely the shareholders whose interest 

is earnings and maybe even earnings quarter by quarter. So I 

think the way that you have to change things is through the incentive structure of the people who are taking risk in ways that has 

been widely discussed, and I think it is fairly clear that you don’t 

finally get paid until whatever trade you have put on, or whatever 

position you put on, is off the books and has been recorded. You 

can’t basically put on positions and get paid based on the flow of 

those positions until the trade is realized, that is, until the book 

is closed on that trade. So this is the notion of longer-term incentives. So if you have longer-term incentives, if you have incentives 

where you can’t game the system by constructing trades or portfolios that again make a little, make a little, maybe blow up, then 

people will act based on those incentives. But the leadership of the 

firm is always going to have the following statement, that our responsibility is to the shareholders, we have to maximize shareholder value, and then the shareholders, by the way, although in 

theory they have a vote, in practice don’t. And so, you know, you 

have sort of this—the management pointing towards the shareholders, the shareholders effectively being silent partners within 

the corporation. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

Dr. Talber, am I saying that right? 

Dr. TALEB. Taleb. 

Mr. WILSON. Taleb. I am sorry. 

Dr. TALEB. There are two problems, and I gave two names, a 

name to each problem. The first one is called, the title of my first 

book, fools of randomness, ‘Fooled by Randomness,’ and other people who believe their own story and actually don’t know that they 

are engaging in these huge amount of hidden risks out of psychological, you know—as humans, we are not good at seeing negative 

outcomes. We are victims of overconfidence, so we make these mistakes whether or not there is a bonus, is the psychological, the first 

one. And the second one, I call them ‘crooks of randomness,’ so 

there is ‘fools of randomness’ and ‘crooks of randomness,’ and you 

always have the presence of both ailments in a system. Like, for 

example, when we had LTCM, Long-Term Capital Management, 

the problem, these people had their money in it, so, visibly, they 

were not gaming the system consciously, all right, they were just 

incapable of understanding that securities can take large variations. So there are these two problems. So the bonus, it is imperative to fix the bonus structure, and as I said here, that I don’t know 

any place in society where people manage risk and get a bonus. 
77

The military people, the police, they don’t get a bonus. So fix, make 

sure that he who bears risk for society doesn’t have a bonus. Fix 

the bonus structure that is not sufficient. 

Mr. WILSON. One of the things that, you know, we have heard 

a lot about since the money was invested in Wall Street was that 

if the big bonuses didn’t continue, the firms couldn’t necessarily 

keep the talent. Do you have any comment on that, Dr. Taleb? 

Dr. TALEB. I am laughing, sorry, because a lot of these people— in my book there is a gentleman who had $10 million, a big hotshot 

trader, and when he blew up, he couldn’t even drive a car. I mean, 

you can find better cab drivers. I don’t know what you could do 

with these Wall Street derivatives, high-income people other than 

use them as drivers but even then, I mean, you can use someone 

less reckless as a driver. So I don’t know what to use them for, 

honestly. I don’t know what is the—I was on Wall Street for 21 

years and a lot of people I wouldn’t use for anything. I don’t know 

if you have some suggestions. So I don’t know what you are competing against, all right, and you have high unemployment on Wall 

Street, and calling that ‘talent’ is a real—it is a very strange use 

of language, people who lost $4.3 trillion worldwide in the profession, and then calling it ‘talent.’ So there is talent in generating bonuses, definitely, that you cannot deny. Other than that, I don’t 

know. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. There is—on this point, there are people who 

are not merely talented, but gifted, in areas like medicine and 

physics and other fields and they seem to get by on some amount 

of money, $200,000, $500,000, $1,000,000. I don’t know that the 

talent in Wall Street is so stellar that it is worth $50 million or 

$100 million versus the talent in these other fields. The issue with 

the talent more is that the structure of Wall Street somehow allows 

that level of compensation, so if one firm does not allow it, people 

can move to another firm that does. But if there is a leveling of 

the field overall so that instead of $20 million people are making 

$1 million or $2 million, you know, then I think this issue of, you 

know, ‘we will lose our talent’ disappears. It has to be done in a 

uniform way, as opposed to affecting just one firm versus another. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Taleb, do you want to respond? 

Dr. TALEB. Yes, I have one comment. He is making a socialistic 

argument to limit bonuses. I am making a capitalistic argument to 

limit bonuses. I am saying if people want to pay each other, they 

can pay whatever they want. I just don’t want society to subsidize 

bonuses. That is it. I am making the opposite argument coming 

from—so this is an extreme bipartisan conclusion here where——

Mr. WILSON. We have a few of those here. 

Dr. TALEB. If people want to take risk, you know, and two adults 

can hurt each other financially as much as they want. The problem 

is, as a taxpayer, okay, I don’t want these bonuses. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. Thank you both. 

Mr. Chairman, just one comment if I could. It just seems that we 

have to try to find a way to legislate maybe some character to Wall 

Street. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. I misread the note that said that 

we would shortly have 40 minutes of votes. We will have votes at 
78

around 11:45 and they will last 40 minutes, so I am delighted that 

we will be able to continue with this panel for Mr. Grayson and for 

a second round of questioning. Mr. Grayson. 

HOLDING WALL STREET ACCOUNTABLE FOR BONUSES

Mr. GRAYSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

We are talking today about what proper incentive structures we 

should have on Wall Street, and I am wondering if we are talking 

too much about carrots and not enough about sticks. In fact, people 

on Wall Street did lose over $4 trillion of our money, and I have 

seen almost no one punished for it. Don’t you think that it would 

be likely to deter bad behavior and an overly fond view of risks if 

we actually punished people? 

Dr. TALEB. I am not a legal scholar but there has got to be a way 

to—there is something called malpractice, okay. There has got to 

be a way where we can go after these people that I haven’t seen 

so far, because people are scared, because Wall Street has ‘talents.’ 

These people would run away and go to Monte Carlo or something, 

so we are afraid of letting them, you know, of them running away, 

but we should be doing it immediately, find people who made 

[these losses]—like the Chairman of an executive committee or the 

firm that we had to support who made $120 million of bonuses, and 

supervised unfettered risk taking and made sure that that gentleman got returns of $120 million bonuses. The place where my 

idea was most popular was Switzerland. The first event of a 

clawback in any country took place in Switzerland, where the authorities went to Mr. Marcel Ospel, head of UBS, after the events 

of October and told him, listen, give us 12 million Swiss francs, 

please, and it was voluntary and he gave back almost—a large 

share of his—but he clawed back his bonuses. 

Mr. GRAYSON. But it was voluntary only because the government 

intervenes by limiting people’s liability. The concept of liability is 

determined by our law, not by the free market. In fact, if we were 

to say that we will not give people the right to hide behind corporate shields, wouldn’t that have a dramatic effect on holding people accountable for the bad decisions that they make? 

Dr. TALEB. To answer, okay, this is still the same problem, fooled 

by randomness or not fooled by randomness. Some people I have 

seen in Chicago trade their own money and lose huge amounts of 

money, not knowing they could lose it, so someone whose net worth 

is $2 million loses $2 million and had to go burn his house to collect insurance money. So I have seen that. It is not just—so people 

sometimes engage in crazy trades, okay, where they have liability 

themselves. It may not be sufficient, but it would be, for me, economically, a good way to have a bonus compensated by malice because capitalism is not just about incentives, it is about punishment. 

Mr. GRAYSON. When you say it wouldn’t be sufficient, all you are 

really saying is that it wouldn’t solve the problem for all time, forever in every case, but it would certainly be a step in the right direction. 

Dr. TALEB. Oh, it would be imperative, not a step. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Imperative? 

Dr. TALEB. It is an imperative. 
79

Mr. GRAYSON. Okay. Now, Dr. Bookstaber, I understand that in 

Sweden, the bank managers have unlimited liability for the mistakes that they make, but what happened in our system with regard to blow-ups, with regard to crazy risks that people take in 

order to pad their own pockets, what effect would that have if we 

were to take that law and introduce it in America? 

MALPRACTICE IN RISK MANAGEMENT

Dr. BOOKSTABER. You know, something along those lines that I 

have advocated is to have the potential of penalties for the risk 

managers within a firm similar to what are there for the CFO of 

a firm. You know, if a CFO knowingly allows some accounting 

statement to go out, where he knows it is incorrect, he is on the 

hook not just from a civil but from a criminal standpoint. If you 

had the risk managers have to sign on the dotted line, that the 

risk—that they have executed their function correctly, and all material risks have been duly represented—I think that could go a 

long way towards solving the problem, because they would then 

have an incentive to make sure everything is right. And there are 

cases, I think, as we go back to this last crisis, where the risk managers were in some sense not up to the task, or possibly in bed 

with the people involved in trading or with senior management, to 

where they were willing to have their views overridden—because 

they had no liability on the one side, and they didn’t want to get 

fired on the other. 

Mr. GRAYSON. But don’t we have to do more than that? Don’t we 

have to not only say to people, you have to fill out these forms 

properly and you have to disclose, but we have to actually hold people accountable for the mistakes that they make, and hold them 

personally accountable? Isn’t that what we need to actually deter 

this kind of misconduct? 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. I guess the question is what type of mistake, 

because everybody makes certain types of mistakes. I think that 

sort of mistake where you can hold people accountable is where 

they—obviously if they knowingly misrepresent—but where there 

is something material that they—on the one hand it is a malpractice where you say, you know, somebody doing this job in a 

reasonable way should have discovered that. 

Mr. GRAYSON. But let us talk about the specific problems we 

have seen time and time again in the last few years. Let us talk 

about, for instance, AIG. In AIG, the fundamental problem is that 

the traders entered into literally billions upon billions of dollars of 

heads, I win, tails, you lose bets, bets that couldn’t possibly be 

made good on by anybody but the U.S. Government, and that 

wasn’t a problem of not filling out the form properly, not disclosing. 

Don’t those people need to be punished in order to deter that conduct in the future? 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. Well, this gets to Dr. Taleb’s point that you 

would have to go into the mindset of the people. Was it, as he is 

saying, you know——

Dr. TALEB. Crooks or fools. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. Yeah, were they crooks or fools. If you can discern one from the other, then I agree with you, but what I am saying is, you could also go one level higher to require, which now is 
80

required, risk management oversight for those functions where it 

is believed to be credible, and these were supposed to be the people 

who know how to do their job, and they have the responsibility to 

represent that this type of event is not occurring. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Dr. Taleb. 

Dr. TALEB. Yes. Well, the problem I saw and I wrote about, actually, in one of my writings not yet published, I say it is easier to 

fool a million than fool a person and it is much easier to fool people 

with billions than to fool them with millions. Why? Because you 

have bandwagon effects, and you have collective—something called 

diffusion of collective responsibility, and I will tell you exactly why. 

If you have—what risk managers are doing is to make sure they 

do exactly what other risk managers do. If there is a mistake, it 

is a mistake that they did not commit individually, but committed—that had company on that. We call it ‘company on a trade.’ 

It is not like an individual doctor who is just incompetent. It is collective incompetence. We had collective risk management incompetence, but they were all doing what other people—the hedge is 

to do what the other guy is doing and that, I don’t know if, you 

know——

Chairman MILLER. Well, the note I got earlier was incorrect and 

now it appears we are going to have votes at any moment, so I will 

start a round of questions and we will try to keep it—I know that 

everybody would like to ask questions of this panel. 

CLAWBACK PROVISIONS

Just one—it is not clear to me whether you actually supported 

a legal requirement that there be clawback provisions in bonus contracts, that if a bonus is based upon a profit this year, that if the 

very same transaction results in a loss in two or three years there 

be requirement, a legal requirement that that bonus be repaid. Dr. 

Taleb? 

Dr. TALEB. Indeed. 

Chairman MILLER. You do——

Dr. TALEB. Indeed. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Bookstaber. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. I don’t know that I would go to the extent of 

having it be a legal requirement. Ideally, it should be requirements 

placed on the corporation by the equity holders, because it makes 

good economic sense. I think the issue of it being a legal requirement gets into the question of, okay, if we are ultimately the ones 

holding the bag if this fails, we now have a societal obligation. But 

I think whether it is done through the shareholders or if it is legislated, that type of structure, incentive structure, clearly makes 

sense for trading. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Taleb. 

Dr. TALEB. There is an additional problem other than the 

clawback. There is the fact that if in any given year, I take $1 million from you, okay—say I win, I get my bonus, and I lose, you 

keep all the losses, so that clawback situation doesn’t solve the free 

option problem. You are solving the mistiming problem, you are not 

solving the free option problem. 

So we have two problems with bonuses. The first one is symmetry. In other words, I make, all right, either a big bonus or noth-
81

ing, whereas if he loses, I take his money, risk his money. He loses 

or makes [money], all right, I just make [money], I just earn. So 

that problem is not solved with the clawback. For example, say the 

TARP money we gave Goldman, all right—okay, let us forget about 

clawbacks. Had they lost money, all right, it would have been—we 

would have eaten the loss. If they made money, they kept the bonuses, okay, so that idea of having just profits and never losses, 

net, net . . . the clawback is about repaying previous bonuses, but 

it doesn’t address the vicious incentive of paying someone for the 

profits and not charging him for the overall losses, and the 

clawback doesn’t solve that. 

Chairman MILLER. Are you suggesting that that should be prohibited by law, or should people just have better sense than to 

agree to that kind of compensation system? 

Dr. TALEB. In other words, people should have skin in the game. 

Net, net, net, if I fail, I should be penalized personally some way 

or another. Don’t have an option where I only have the profits and 

none of the losses. 

Chairman MILLER. I am still not clear if you are suggesting that 

that be a legal requirement or there simply should be a change in 

the culture, that anyone who agrees to a hedge fund compensation 

of 220 is a fool, and if people stopped agreeing to it, the compensation system would change. 

Dr. TALEB. No, to me, it should be only a legal requirement 

wherever TARP or a possible society bailout is possible. If there is 

no society—if someone signs no society bailout, then no. 

CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS

Chairman MILLER. I asked the question earlier but I am not sure 

I got a clear answer. Do you think credit default swaps should be 

banned? If not, do you think they should be limited to—they should 

have a requirement that would be comparable to the requirement 

of an insurable interest in insurance law? 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. I agree with the latter. I don’t believe that 

credit default swaps should be banned, because they do have economic function in the sense that—if I have the debt of a company 

and perhaps it is illegal, or for some reason it is difficult for me 

to undo my risk by selling it, I can use the swap to mitigate or 

hedge my risk. But I don’t think that it should turn into what it 

has turned into—basically, a gambling parlor of side bets for people 

who have no economic interest at all in the underlying firm. The 

point you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, in your opening remarks, that 

the number of people doing side bets far exceeds those who actually 

have an economic reason to be taking that exposure. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Taleb. 

Dr. TALEB. Mr. Chairman, these products are absurd. They are 

class B products for me, for the simple reason that it is like someone buying insurance on the Titanic from someone on the Titanic. 

These credit default swaps, you buy them from a bank, so they 

make no sense. And I have been writing about these class B instruments that have absolutely no meaning and I don’t believe that 

they have economic justification other than [to] generate bonuses. 

Chairman MILLER. The other analogy I have heard is buying insurance against a nuclear holocaust; if you think you are going to 
82

be around to file a claim, who do you think you are going to file 

it with. I will give up my own time; Dr. Broun. 

WERE THE BAILOUTS AND STIMULUS FUNDS NECESSARY? 

Mr. BROUN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Do you believe that bailing out banks and transferring debt from private sources to public 

sources is a responsible action? 

Dr. TALEB. I mean, my opinion is, I am going to be very, very, very honest—it is irresponsible because we have levels of about $60 

trillion, $70 trillion worldwide in excess debt that is being slowly 

transformed into something for our children. If a company goes 

bankrupt, that debt disappears the old-fashioned way or it turns 

into equity. If government bails out a company, it is a debt that 

our children and grandchildren will have to bear. So it doesn’t reduce debt in society, and this is why I have been warning against 

the stimulus packages and all of these. Transforming private debt 

into public debt is vastly more vicious than just taking the pain of 

reducing the level of debt. 

Mr. BROUN. Dr. Bookstaber. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. In the abstract, I don’t think that makes sense. 

In the current crisis, I think it was inevitable, because we had to 

adjust for problems that got us to where we are. So I would say 

we would want to construct a system with regulatory safeguards, 

with adequate capital, with correct incentives so that the event 

doesn’t occur where we have to move into the bailout mode that we 

had in the recent past. But my sense is that if we hadn’t taken this 

action, as distasteful and costly as it may be, the end results for 

the economy may have been far worse. 

Mr. BROUN. So you believe that stimulus spending and debt accumulation and the bailouts are all necessary responses to this economic crisis, is what I am gathering. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. Yes, I believe they were for this crisis. I don’t 

believe that as a general principle it is something that we want to 

occur, and hopefully we can take steps so that it doesn’t occur 

again. 

Mr. BROUN. Dr. Taleb. 

Dr. TALEB. I don’t believe in deficit spending for the following 

reason, and it comes from the very same mathematics that I used 

to talk about tail risks. We live in a very nonlinear world—as you 

know, the butterfly effects, a butterfly in India causes a rainstorm 

in Washington. You know, these small, little—we don’t quite understand the link between action and consequences in some areas, 

particularly monetary policy. So if you have deficit spending, it is 

debt that society has to repay someday, okay? You depend a lot 

more on expert error and projections. I showed in ‘‘The Black 

Swan,’’ in my book, ‘‘The Black Swan’’ from 27,000 economic projections, that an astrologist would do better than economists, including, you know, some people here who are economists making projections. So I don’t want to rely on expert projections to be able to 

issue a stimulus and say oh, no, no, look what will happen by 2014, 

we will be paying it back. These are more of the huge errors. 

So what is the solution? The solution is going to be that all this, 

all right, may lead to what governments have been very good at 

doing for a long time—printing, okay. And we know the con-
83

sequences of printing; everybody would like to have a little bit of 

inflation but you cannot. Because of non-linearities, it is almost impossible to have the 3.1 percent inflation everybody would love to 

have. You see, a little bit of error could cause hyperinflation, or if 

you do a little less, maybe it would be ineffective. So to me, deficit 

spending, aside from the morality of transferring, you know, private debt into my children’s debt—okay, aside from that, because 

someone has got to buy that bond, okay, the way it may lead—you 

know, because of error in projection—[is] into printing of money. 

Mr. BROUN. So from my previous questions as well as others’, I 

take it that both of you all would agree, looking in the future, not 

only with this economic crisis but in the future, to prevent other 

economic crises, the real solution is to take away the taxpayer safety net which was implied and now with Freddie and Fannie is express taxpayers being on the hook for this mismanagement and 

their bad decisions. Would you both agree, yes or no, that taking 

away that safety net will help people be more responsible, and we 

will have more of the sticks that my colleague was talking about 

and that they can within their own company just to protect their 

own company’s viability, et cetera, will put in place more responsible risk management and they will make better decisions. Would 

you both agree with that statement? 

Dr. TALEB. I agree with the statement, remove the safety net. 

Dr. BOOKSTABER. I don’t know that I can say yes or no because 

I have to envision what the future world looks like. If we make no 

changes in terms of regulation and oversight, then I wouldn’t agree 

with the notion of taking away the safety net because we have a 

flawed system where there is a notion of ‘too big to fail’ . . . where 

if certain institutions do fail, it has severe adverse consequences for 

people on Main Street. I think that we have to say, we want to get 

rid of the safety net, and to do that we need to get the corrective 

incentive structures, the correct level of oversight from regulators, 

the right capital requirements. So as an end result, that is where 

I believe we should go, but I don’t think we can be there in good 

conscience for the typical citizen without doing a better job, you 

know, in the regulatory arena. 

Dr. TALEB. I don’t understand this logic because I don’t see 

how—in 1983, when banks were bailed out, and even one of them 

was the First National Bank of Chicago. It set a bad precedent. 

Every time I heard the same argument, you hear the same argument, ‘‘this is necessary, society can’t function, but in the future 

we’ll make sure we don’t do it again.’’ I don’t understand this argument. 

Mr. BROUN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MILLER. Ms. Dahlkemper? Okay, Mr. Wilson? 

Mr. BROUN. I think we need to go vote. 

Chairman MILLER. We have been called to our votes. Thank you 

very much to this panel. We will be gone for about 20 minutes, not 

40 minutes as I earlier understood. But at that point it does make 

sense to excuse this panel, but thank you very much. It has been 

very helpful and even entertaining. And then when we come back, 

when we return we will have the second panel, although these are 

the last votes of the week so it is possible some Members will not 
84

come back but go straight to the airport. Thank you, and we will 

be at ease. 

[Recess.] 

Panel II: 

Chairman MILLER. Other Members may return or may not, but 

I think we should begin the second panel, and I also mean it when 

I say that this panel is unusually distinguished. Our witnesses are 

leading experts in their respective fields. Dr. Gregg Berman is the 

Head of Risk Business at RiskMetrics Group, which is the presentday descendant of the group at J.P. Morgan that created the Valueat-Risk methodology. He has worked with many of the world’s largest financial institutions on the development of risk models. Mr. 

James Rickards is the Senior Managing Director of the consulting 

firm Omnis Inc., is a former risk manager and investment banker 

who has been involved in the launch of several hedge funds. As 

general counsel of Long-Term Capital Management during the 

1998 crisis, he was the firm’s principal negotiator of a bailout plan 

that rescued it. And Mr. Christopher Whalen is the Managing Director at Institutional Risk Analytics, a provider of risk management tools and consulting services. He volunteers as the Regional 

Director of the Professional Risk Managers International Association, and edits a weekly report on global financial markets. And finally, Dr. David Colander, the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished 

Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, has written or edited over 40 books, more than 40 books, including a top-selling Principals of Economics textbook and more than 150 articles on various 

aspects of economics, including the sociology of the economics profession. 

You will also have five minutes for your oral testimony, your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will be included in the 

record for the hearing. When you have completed your spoken testimony, when all of you have, we will have rounds of questions from 

the Members who are here, which may include me repeatedly. It 

is the practice of this subcommittee, as you saw earlier, to receive 

testimony under oath. Again, I don’t think any of you have to 

worry about perjury. That would require that the prosecutor prove 

what the truth was, beyond a reasonable doubt, and that you knew 

what the truth was beyond a reasonable doubt. Do any of you have 

any objection to swearing an oath? Okay, and I think you may 

sleep easy tonight without worrying about perjury prosecution. You 

also have the right to be represented by counsel. Do any of you 

have counsel here? And all the witnesses said that they do not. If 

you would now please stand and raise your right hand. Do you 

swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth? 

The record will show that all the witnesses did take the oath. We 

will begin with Dr. Berman. 

STATEMENT OF DR. GREGG E. BERMAN, HEAD OF RISK 

BUSINESS, RISKMETRICS GROUP 

Dr. BERMAN. Thank you. I would like to begin by thanking the 

Committee for this opportunity to present our thoughts on Value-
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at-Risk and banking capital, especially in the context of the present 

financial crisis. 

My name is Gregg Berman and I am currently the Head of the 

Risk Business at RiskMetrics Group. I joined as a founding partner 

11 years ago when we first spun off from J.P. Morgan, and 

throughout that time I have had a number of roles, from leading 

research and development to leading product design, but mostly 

spending time with clients, and those clients include some of the 

world’s largest hedge funds, largest asset managers and certainly 

the world’s largest banks. During that time, and even under oath 

I feel I can say this, I have not traded any derivatives in any way, 

shape or form. 

My comments today revolve around three essential points. First, 

Value-at-Risk, or simply ‘VaR,’ was created about 15 years ago to 

address issues faced by risk managers of large, multi-asset, complex portfolios. The purpose of VaR was to answer the question: 

how much can you lose? In this context, it has actually enjoyed tremendous success, ranging from revealing the hidden risks of complex strategies to communicating with investors in a consistent and 

transparent fashion. 

Second, VaR is a framework. It is not a prescriptive set of rules. 

As such, it has been implemented in many different ways across 

a wide variety of institutions. Criticisms of VaR that focus on the 

use of normal distributions or poor historical data must be taken 

in context. These issues are often the results of specific VaR implementations that may not have kept up with the best practices in 

the community. 

Third, most VaR methodologies utilize recent market data to estimate future short-term movements in order to allow risk managers to make proactive decisions based on rapidly changing market conditions. This is what VaR was designed to do. Research 

shows that these estimates are indeed quite robust, but they are 

not designed to predict long-term trends, and they are not designed 

to operate when the markets themselves stop functioning. Banks, 

on the other hand, must be protected against adverse long-term 

trends and in situations where the markets actually stop functioning. This, therefore, is not the domain of Value-at-Risk. 

So how do we tackle this problem? We start by noting that the 

current crisis is driven by two primary factors: one, the failure of 

market participants and of regulators to acknowledge and prepare 

for large negative long-term trends, such as a decline in home 

prices or buildup of leveraged credit, coupled with, two, the failure 

of many institutions to accurately and completely model how these 

negative long-term trends would actually affect their financial holdings. In this context, I am using the word ‘‘model’’ to mean a mathematical representation of a security or derivative that shows how 

its value is driven by one or more underlying market factors. Since 

both of these issues were quite well known for quite long periods 

of time, it is very hard to say that this crisis was unforeseeable, 

unknowable or a fat-tailed event. 

All market participants, including banks, must do a better job at 

modeling complex securities and in understanding how their strategies will fare under changing market conditions. For example, if 

the holders of mortgage-backed bonds would have known how sen-
86

sitive these assets were to modest changes in default rates, they 

may not have purchased them in the first place. New rules, regulations and other types of policy changes regarding better disclosure 

in data must be done in order to address this critical issue. 

But it is banks and regulators who must specifically focus on preparing more for the negative long-term trends that lie ahead and 

less on trying to predict things with probabilities. Though current 

VaR methodologies are designed to estimate short-term market 

movements under normal market conditions, regulators nevertheless try to recast these models in order to measure the probability 

of long-term losses under extended market dislocations. We propose 

that it is not the model that needs to be recast, but that regulators 

need to recast the question itself. 

VaR is about making dynamic decisions, constructing portfolios, 

sizing bets and communicating risk. On the contrary, banking capital is more like an insurance policy designed to protect against 

worst-case events and their consequences. Instead of having banks 

report probabilities of short-term losses, banks should estimate the 

losses they would expect to sustain under a set of adverse conditions chosen by regulators. The question of ‘how much can you lose’ 

is thus changed to ‘how much would you lose.’

The conditions that banks are tested against should depend on 

what type of events policy-makers in the public interest believe 

that banks should be able to withstand. In this fashion, models, 

probabilities, simulations and predictions are left to those making 

ongoing risk-reward business decisions, whereas the minimum levels of capital needed to ensure a bank’s survival are based on how 

regulators implement the broader requirements of policy-makers. 

Perhaps one bank needs to survive a 100-year flood whereas an orderly liquidation is all that is required for a different bank. Perhaps all banks should be able to weather a further ten percent 

downturn in housing prices, but no bank is required to survive a 

50 percent default rate or a 40 percent unemployment rate—not 

because these events are highly improbable, but because policymakers decide that this is too onerous a burden for a bank to bear. 

In summary, VaR is an excellent framework for active risk management by banks and other financial institutions and the development of risk models must continue unabated. But banking capital 

serves a different purpose, and a resetting of expectations will 

allow for the development of much better solutions driven by policy 

instead of by probability. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Berman follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GREGG E. BERMAN

I’d like to begin by thanking the Committee for this opportunity to present our 

thoughts on Value-at-Risk and banking capital in the context of the present financial crisis. My name is Gregg Berman and I am currently the head of the risk business at RiskMetrics Group, a provider of risk and corporate governance services to 

the financial community. I have been at RiskMetrics since its founding 11 years ago 

and in the last decade have worked with many of the world’s largest financial institutions on the development of risk models, their use by hedge funds, asset managers, and banks.

SIMPLE ROOTS OF A COMPLEX CRISIS 

My comments today start with a rather bold assertion—the current crisis was not 

unpredictable, unforeseeable, or unknowable. In that sense I’m not sure it should 
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1The matter is further complicated by derivative contracts that do not even have a well-defined measure of size. For example, what is the size of a contract that pays the holder $1,000 

for each penny-increase in the average spread throughout September between the price of natural gas for delivery in November and the price for delivery in January? Technically the answer 

is zero since the holder owns no natural gas, but the risk is certainly not zero. 2 Exhibit 1 on page 10 shows the potential one-day profit-and-loss distribution of selling a 

short-term at-the-money put on the S&P 500. Out of 5,000 trials we see that about 50 of them 

have losses of 250 percent or worse. Thus VaR is 250 percent with a one percent probability. 

Alternatively we can ask for the worst five out of 5,000 trials (a 0.1 percent probability) and 

observe these losses to be 400 percent or worse. 3The marketplace is rife with common fallacies about VaR due to poor implementations. 

When VaR first became popular in the mid-1990’s computing power limited how accurately instruments, especially derivatives, could be modeled. Approximations that relied on the use of 

Continued

be classified as a fat-tailed event. Rather, it was caused by the coupling of two fundamental problems, namely:

1. the inability of market participants to acknowledge and prepare for the consequences of long-term trends, such as a protracted downward spiral in home 

prices, or a leveraging of the credit market through the use of CDS, and

2. the inability of market participants to recognize the economic exposures they 

had to those trends through holdings such as asset-backed securities and derivative contracts.

The fact that these issues went unchecked for many years led directly to the creation of multiple, unsustainable market bubbles, which when burst propelled us 

downwards into a full-blown crisis. 

But if my assertion is correct and these events were foreseeable, then what does 

that imply about all the financial models and risk methodologies that were supposed 

to monitor and protect us from such a crisis? It is the answer to this question that 

I’d like to explore.

THE INEVITABILITY OF VALUE-AT-RISK 

In the early days of risk management size was used as a primary measure of risk. After all, intuition tells us that $10,000,000 in Ford bonds should be ten times 

riskier than $1,000,000 in Ford bonds. But soon the market realized that 

$10,000,000 of Ford bonds is probably riskier than a similar value of government 

bonds, but not as risky as $10,000,000 of Internet start-up equity.1

To address these issues practitioners switched from asking ‘‘how large is your position’’ to ‘‘how much can you lose.’’ But there is not just one answer to that question 

since for any given security differing amounts can be lost with different probabilities. One can estimate these probabilities by polling traders, by building econometric models, by relying on intuition, or by using variations of history to observe 

relevant patterns of past losses. Each of these methods has their own benefits and 

weaknesses. And unless we consider only one security at a time, it will also be necessary to make estimates of how the movements in each security are related to the 

movements of every other security in a given portfolio. 

These concepts are encapsulated by two well-known statistical terms: volatility 

and correlation. If one could measure the volatility and correlation of every security 

in a portfolio the question ‘‘how much can you lose’’ could be meaningfully addressed. This process is the basis of a popular risk methodology known as Valueat-Risk, or VaR.

HOW VaR IS COMPUTED AND HOW IT IS USED 

Because security valuations are often driven by underlying market factors, such 

as equity prices, spreads, interest rates, or housing prices, VaR is usually calculated 

in a two-step process that mimics this behavior. In the first step a model for the 

economic exposure of each security is created that links its value to one or more 

of underlying market factors. In the second step future trends of these underlying 

factors are simulated using volatilities, correlations, and other probabilistic methods. These two steps are then combined to create a curve that plots potential profitsand-losses against the probability of occurrence. For any given curve VaR is defined 

to be the amount that can be lost at a specific level of probability. It is a way of 

describing the entire profit-and-loss curve without having to list every data point.2

The accuracy of any VaR number depends on how well underlying markets have 

been simulated, and how well each security has been modeled. There unfortunately 

exists a tremendous variability in current practices and different financial institutions perform each step with varying levels of accuracy and diligence.3 Deficiencies 
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so-called normal distributions (bell-shaped curves) were often required. Also, the amount of market data that could be used, and the frequency at which this data was updated, was limited 

by technical and mathematical challenges resulting in further approximations. However, by the 

early part of this decade many of these challenges were overcome and today’s simulation techniques do not rely on normal distributions and are not restricted by limited data. Unfortunately 

many institutions with older implementations still use somewhat outdated and approximate 

methods that do a poor job in estimating the risk of multi-asset, derivative-heavy portfolios. 4One fundamental criticism of VaR is that it can be ‘‘gamed’’ or manipulated since one number cannot by itself represent or reveal all possible ‘‘tail-loss’’ events. This is easily rectified by 

simply asking for VaR numbers at more than one level of probability, by computing the average 

of all losses comprising a tail event (often called conditional VaR or expected loss), or by examining the entire distribution of estimated future losses and their corresponding probabilities. 5Many institutions and market participants did not recognize nor understand how their portfolios and strategies would be affected by a fall in housing prices or a widening of credit spreads. 

Regulators had even less information on these effects and almost no information on how they 

were linked across institutions.

It could be argued that if investors had understood the nature of the mortgage-backed products 

they had purchased, many would not have purchased them in the first place (which would have 

significantly curtailed the formation of the bubble itself). If regulators had understood how CDS 

contracts inherently lever the credit markets they may not have allowed their unbridled expansion. And if insurance companies understood that changes in the mark-to-market values of their 

derivative contracts would require the posting of collateral to their counter-parties many would 

not have entered into those deals. None of these decisions involve predicting the future or modeling fat tails. They do involve understanding the present, spending time on the details of financial instruments, and being incented to care about their risk.

Tackling these significant shortcomings may require new regulations regarding data availability, disclosure, and the analytical capabilities of each market participant. Central oversight 

of the markets themselves will be needed to monitor, and sometimes even limit, actions that 

could trigger systemic risk and future liquidity crises. 6There is nothing endemic to VaR that limits its applicability to short-term estimates or functioning markets. However, current methodologies are optimized for those conditions and this is 

where most parameters have been tested for proper use. Research into new models that lengthen the prediction horizon and include factors like liquidity to account for non-functioning markets is underway. As development of these methodologies progresses we may see the domain 

of VaR extended into more areas of risk. 7One technique employed to ‘‘fix’’ the short-term aspect of VaR models is to utilize long-term 

historical data as the basis for ‘‘better’’ future estimates. This is a very common but dangerous 

practice since it both invalidates any estimates of short-term volatility (preventing proper use 

by risk managers trying to be reactive to rapid changes to the market) and it doesn’t actually 

provide any better estimates of long-term trends. For a complete discussion on this and other 

related topics see included reference by Christopher Finger (RiskMetrics Research Monthly—

April 2009) and references therein (including a March 2008 report issued by the Senior Supervisors Group on their study of how risk was implemented at a variety of large banks). 

in how VaR is implemented at a particular firm should not be confused with limitations of VaR itself.4

But indeed there are limitations. When computed according to current best practices, VaR is most applicable for estimating short-term market volatilities under 

‘‘normal’’ market conditions. These techniques are based on over a decade of welltested research demonstrating that in most circumstances recent market movements 

are indeed a good predictor of future short-term volatility. VaR models have seen 

tremendous success in a wide range of applications including portfolio construction, 

multi-asset-class aggregation, revealing unexpected bets, investor communication, 

the extension of margin, and general transparency. 

As such, VaR has become an essential part of risk management, and when properly integrated into an overall investment process it provides an excellent framework for deploying capital in areas that properly balance risk and reward.

VAR AND BANKING CAPITAL 

So why did this not foretell the current crisis? First and foremost, many institutions and market participants did not perform step one correctly—they failed to correctly model how their securities would behave under changing market conditions. 

This failure is one of the leading causes of current crisis.5

The second issue is where banking capital comes in. Recall that our crisis stems 

from long-term trends, not short-term volatility. And as mentioned, most of today’s 

VaR techniques are only applicable for estimating potential short-term movements 

in well-functioning markets.6 But it is long-term trends and non-functioning markets that are the concerns of banking capital. 

Nevertheless regulators rely on VaR as the basis for many bank capital calculations.7 And even today they continue to recast VaR-like models in order to address 
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8See included reference by Christopher Finger (RiskMetrics Research Monthly—February 

2009) containing our comments on the Basel committee’s proposed Incremental Risk Charge—

an extension that uses VaR for additional types of capital charges. 9The recent stress-tests conducted on banks by the Federal Reserve is an excellent example 

of how policy, as opposed to probability, can help set capital requirements. This should not diminish the role of simulations and the use of models to explore possibilities and uncover unexpected relationships, but this should be a guide of what the future may bring, not a prediction 

of what it will (or will not) bring. 

VaR’s perceived shortcomings.8 We propose that it is not the model that needs to 

be recast but rather the question that regulators want the model to address. 

POLICY-BASED BANKING CAPITAL 

We believe that the foundation of banking capital is rooted in the following two 

questions:

1) What are the adverse events that consumers, banks, and the financial system as a whole, need to be protected against?

2) What is required from our banks when those events occur?

This is not the domain of VaR. On the contrary, banking capital is more like an 

insurance policy designed to protect against worst-case events and their consequences. Instead of having banks report probabilities of short-term losses, banks 

should estimate the losses they would expect to sustain under a set of adverse conditions chosen by regulators. The question of ‘‘how much can you lose’’ is thus 

changed to ‘‘how much would you lose.’’

The conditions that banks are tested against should depend on what types of 

events policy-makers decide that, in the public interest, banks should be able to 

withstand. In this fashion models, probabilities, simulations, and predictions are left 

to those making ongoing risk-reward business decisions whereas the minimum levels of capital needed to ensure a bank’s survival are based on how regulators implement the broader requirements of policy-makers. Perhaps one bank needs to survive 

a hundred-year flood whereas an orderly liquidation is all that is required for a different bank. Perhaps all banks should be able to weather a further 10 percent downturn in housing prices, but no bank is required to survive a 50 percent default rate 

or a 40 percent unemployment rate—not because these are highly improbable, but 

because policy-makers decide that this is too onerous a burden to expect a bank to 

bear.9

To summarize, we believe that key differences between the needs of risk management and banking capital suggest different solutions are required. And in doing so 

each field can separately develop to meet the ever-expanding array of challenges we 

face today.
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BIOGRAPHY FOR GREGG E. BERMAN

Gregg E. Berman, 43, is currently head of RiskMetrics Risk Business covering institutional and wealth management offerings that serve Hedge Funds, Asset Managers, Prime Brokers, Banks, Financial Advisors, Insurance Companies, and 

Corporates. Mr. Berman joined RiskMetrics as a founding member during the time 

of its spin-off from J.P. Morgan in 1998 and has held a number of roles from research to head of product management, market risk, and of business management. 

Prior to joining RiskMetrics Group, Mr. Berman co-managed a number of multiasset Hedge Funds within New York-based ED&F Man. His start in the Hedge 

Fund space began in 1993, researching and developing multi-asset trading strate-
106

gies as part of Mint Investment Management Corporation, a $1bn CTA based in 

New Jersey. 

Mr. Berman is a physicist by training and holds degrees from Princeton University (Ph.D. 1994, M.S. 1989), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S. 

1987).

Chairman MILLER. Thank you, Dr. Berman. 

Mr. Rickards for five minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MR. JAMES G. RICKARDS, SENIOR MANAGING 

DIRECTOR FOR MARKET INTELLIGENCE, OMNIS, INC., 

MCLEAN, VA 

Mr. RICKARDS. Mr. Chairman, my name is James Rickards and 

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you on a subject of the utmost importance to global capital markets. 

The world is two years into the worst financial crisis since the 

Great Depression. The list of culprits is long, including mortgage 

brokers, investment bankers and rating agencies. The story sadly 

is, by now, well known. What is less well known is that behind 

these actors were quantitative risk models which said that all was 

well even as the bus was driving over a cliff. 

Unfortunately, we have been here before. In 1998, capital markets came to the brink of collapse due to the failure of a hedge 

fund, Long-Term Capital Management. The amounts involved seem 

small compared to today’s catastrophe. However, it did not seem 

that way at the time. I know, I was general counsel of LTCM. 

What is most striking to me now as I look back is how nothing has 

changed and how no lessons were learned. The lessons should have 

been obvious. LTCM used fatally flawed VaR models, too much leverage, and the solutions were clear. Risk models needed to be 

changed or abandoned, leverage needed to be reduced, and regulatory oversight needed to be increased. 

Amazingly, the United States Government did the opposite. They 

repealed Glass-Steagall in 1999 and allowed banks to act like 

hedge funds. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 allowed more unregulated derivatives. SEC regulations in 2004 allowed increased leverage. It was as if the United States had looked 

at the catastrophe of LTCM and decided to double down. None of 

this would have happened without the assurance and comfort provided to regulators and Wall Street by VaR models. But all models 

are based on assumptions. If the assumptions are flawed, no 

amount of mathematics will compensate. Therefore, the root of our 

inquiry into VaR should be an examination of the assumptions behind the models. 

The key assumptions are the following: one, the efficient market 

hypothesis, which assumes that investors behave rationally; two, 

the random walk, which assumes that no investor can beat the 

market consistently, because future prices are independent of the 

past; three, normally distributed risk. This says that since future 

price movements are random, the relationship of the frequency and 

the severity of the events will also be random, like a coin toss or 

roll of the dice. The random distribution is represented as a bell 

curve. Value-at-Risk would be a fine methodology but for the fact 

that all three of these assumptions are wrong. Markets are not efficient, future prices are not independent of the past, risk is not nor-
107

mally distributed. As the saying goes, ‘‘Besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, 

how was the play?’’

Behavioral economics has done a masterful job of showing that 

investors do not behave rationally and are guided by emotion. Similarly, prices do not move randomly but are dependent on past 

prices. In effect, news may be ignored for sustained periods of time 

until a kind of tipping point is achieved, at which point investors 

will react en masse. The normal distribution of risk has been 

known to be false since the early 1960s, when studies showed price 

distributions to be shaped in what is known as a power curve. A 

power curve has fewer low-impact events than the bell curve but 

has far more high-impact events. In short, a power curve corresponds to market reality while a bell curve does not. 

Power curves have low predictability but can offer other valuable 

insights. One lesson is that as you increase the scale of the system, 

the size of the largest possible catastrophe grows exponentially. An 

example will illustrate the relationship between the scale of the 

system and the greatest catastrophe possible. Imagine a vessel 

with a large hold divided into three sections, separated by watertight bulkheads. If a hole is punched in one section and that section fills with water, the vessel will still float. Now imagine the 

bulkheads are removed and the same hole is punched into the vessel. The entire hold will fill with water and the vessel will sink. In 

this example, the hold can be thought of as the system. The sinking 

of the vessel represents the catastrophic failure of the system. 

When the bulkheads are in place, we have three small systems. 

When the bulkheads are removed, we have one large system. By 

removing the bulkheads, we increase the scale of the system by a 

factor of three, but the likelihood of failure did not increase by a 

factor of three. It went from practically zero to practically 100 percent. The system size tripled, but the risk of sinking went up exponentially. 

If scale is the primary determinant of risk in complex systems, 

it follows that descaling is the most effective way to manage risk. 

This does not mean that the totality of the system needs to 

shrink—merely that it be divided into subcomponents with limited 

interaction. This has the same effect as installing the watertight 

bulkheads referred to above. In this manner, severe financial distress in one sector does not result in contagion among all sectors. 

This descaling can be accomplished with three reforms: number 

one, the enactment of a modernized version of Glass-Steagall with 

a separation between bank deposit taking on the one hand, and 

market risk on the other; two, strict requirements for all derivative 

products to be traded on exchanges subject to margin position limits, price transparency and netting; three, higher regulatory capital 

requirements and reduced leverage for banks and brokers. Traditional ratios of eight to one for banks and 15 to one for brokers 

seem adequate, provided off-balance sheet positions are included. 

Let us abandon VaR and the bell curve once and for all and accelerate empirical research into the actual metrics of event distributions. Even if predictive value is low, there is value in knowing the limits of our knowledge. Understanding the way risk metastasizes with scale might be lesson enough. It would offer a prop-
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er dose of humility to those trying to supersize banks and regulators. 

Thank you for this opportunity to testify. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rickards follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JAMES G. RICKARDS

The Risks of Financial Modeling:

VaR and the Economic Meltdown 

Introduction 

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member and Members of this subcommittee, my 

name is James Rickards, and I want to extend my deep appreciation for the opportunity and the high honor to speak to you today on a subject of the utmost importance in the management of global capital markets and the global banking system. 

The Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight has a long and distinguished 

history of examining technology and environmental matters which affect the health 

and well-being of Americans. Today our financial health is in jeopardy and I sincerely applaud your efforts to examine the flaws and misuse in financial modeling 

which have contributed to the impairment of the financial health of our citizens and 

the country as a whole. 

As a brief biographical note, I am an economist, lawyer and author and currently 

work at Omnis, Inc. in McLean, VA where I specialize in the field of threat finance 

and market intelligence. My colleagues and I provide expert analysis of global capital markets to members of the national security community including military, intelligence and diplomatic directorates. My writings and research have appeared in 

numerous journals and I am an Op-Ed contributor to the Washington Post and New 

York Times and a frequent commentator on CNBC, CNN, Fox and Bloomberg. I was 

formerly General Counsel of Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund at the 

center of the 1998 financial crisis, where I was principal negotiator of the Wall 

Street rescue plan sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Summary: The Problem with VaR 

The world is now two years into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The IMF has estimated that the total lost wealth in this crisis so far exceeds 

$60 Trillion dollars, more than the cost of all of the wars of the 20th century combined. The list of causes and culprits is long including mortgage brokers making 

loans borrowers could not afford, investment bankers selling securities while anticipating their default, rating agencies granting triple-A ratings to bonds which soon 

suffered catastrophic losses, managers and traders focused on short-term profits and 

bonuses at the expense of their institutions, regulators acting complacently in the 

face of growing leverage and imprudence and consumers spending and borrowing at 

non-sustainable rates based on a housing bubble which was certain to burst at some 

point. This story, sadly, is by now well known. 

What is less well-known is that behind all of these phenomena were quantitative 

risk management models which told interested parties that all was well even as the 

bus was driving over a cliff. Mortgage brokers could not have made unscrupulous 

loans unless Wall Street was willing to buy them. Wall Street would not have 

bought the loans unless they could package them into securities which their risk 

models told them had a low risk of loss. Investors would not have bought the securities unless they had triple-A ratings. The rating agencies would not have given 

those ratings unless their models told them the securities were almost certain to 

perform as expected. Transaction volumes would not have reached the levels they 

did without leverage in financial institutions. Regulators would not have approved 

that leverage unless they had confidence in the risk models being used by the regulated entities. In short, the entire financial edifice, from borrower to broker to banker to investor to rating agency to regulator, was supported by a belief in the power 

and accuracy of quantitative financial risk models. Therefore an investigation into 

the origins, accuracy and performance of those models is not ancillary to the financial crisis; it is not a footnote; it is the heart of the matter. Nothing is more important to our understanding of this crisis and nothing is more important to the task 

of avoiding a recurrence of the crisis we are still living through. 

Unfortunately, we have been here before. In 1998, western capital markets came 

to the brink of collapse, owing to the failure of a hedge fund, Long-Term Capital 

Management, and a trillion dollar web of counter-party risk with all of the major 
109

banks and brokers at that time. Then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury 

Secretary Robert Rubin called it the worst financial crisis in over 50 years. The 

amounts involved and the duration of the crisis both seem small compared to today’s 

catastrophe, however, it did not seem that way at the time. Capital markets really 

did teeter on the brink of collapse; I know, I was there. As General Counsel of LongTerm Capital Management, I negotiated the bail out which averted an even greater 

disaster at that time. What is most striking to me now as I look back is how nothing 

changed and how no lessons were applied. 

The lessons were obvious at the time. LTCM had used fatally flawed VaR risk 

models. LTCM had used too much leverage. LTCM had transacted in unregulated 

over-the-counter derivatives instead of exchange traded derivatives. The solutions 

were obvious. Risk models needed to be changed or abandoned. Leverage needed to 

be reduced. Derivatives needed to be moved to exchanges and clearinghouses. Regulatory oversight needed to be increased. 

Amazingly the United States Government did the opposite. The repeal of GlassSteagall in 1999 allowed banks to act like hedge funds. The Commodities Futures 

Modernization Act of 2000 allowed more unregulated derivatives. The Basle II accords and SEC regulations in 2004 allowed increased leverage. It was as if the 

United States had looked at the near catastrophe of LTCM and decided to doubledown. 

What reason can we offer to explain this all-in approach to financial risk? Certainly the power of Wall Street lobbyists and special interests cannot be discounted. 

Alan Greenspan played a large role through his belief that markets could self-regulate through the intermediation of bank credit. In fairness, he was not alone in this 

belief. But none of this could have prevailed in the aftermath of the 1998 collapse 

without the assurance and comfort provided by quantitative risk models. These 

models, especially Value-at-Risk, cast a hypnotic spell, as science often does, and assured bankers, investors and regulators that all was well even as the ashes of 

LTCM were still burning. 

What are these models? What is the attraction that allows so much faith to be 

placed in them? And what are the flaws which lead to financial collapse time and 

time again? 

The term ‘‘Value-at-Risk’’ or VaR is used in two senses. One meaning refers to 

the assumptions, models and equations which constitute the risk management systems most widely used in large financial institutions today. The other meaning refers to the output of those systems, as in, ‘‘our VaR today is $200 million’’ which 

refers to the maximum amount the institution is expected to lose in a single day 

within some range of probability or certainty usually expressed at the 99 percent 

level. For purposes of this testimony, we will focus on VaR in the first sense. If the 

models are well founded then the output should be of some value. If not, then the 

output will be unreliable. Therefore the proper focus of our inquiry should be on the 

soundness of the models themselves. 

Furthermore, any risk management system is only as good as the assumptions behind it. It seems fair to conclude that based on a certain set of assumptions, the 

quantitative analysts and computer developers are able within reason to express 

those assumptions in equations and to program the equations as computer code. In 

other words, if the assumptions are correct then it follows that the model development and the output should be reasonably correct and useful as well. Conversely, 

if the assumptions are flawed then no amount of mathematical equation writing and 

computer development will compensate for this deficiency and the output will always be misleading or worse. Therefore, the root of our inquiry into models should 

be an examination of the assumptions behind the models. 

In broad terms, the key assumptions are the following:

The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH): This assumes that investors and market 

participants behave rationally from the perspective of wealth maximization and will 

respond in a rational manner to a variety of inputs including price signals and 

news. It also assumes that markets efficiently price in all inputs in real time and 

that prices move continuously and smoothly from one level to another based on 

these new inputs.

The Random Walk: This is a corollary to EMH and assumes that since markets efficiently price in all information, no investor can beat the market consistently because 

any information which an investor might rely on to make an investment decision 

is already reflected in the current market price. This means than future market 

prices are independent of past market prices and will be based solely on future 

events that are essentially unknowable and therefore random.
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Normally Distributed Risk: This is also a corollary to EMH and says that since future price movements are random, their degree distribution (i.e., relationship of frequency to severity of events) will also be random like a coin toss or roll of the dice. 

This random or normal degree distribution is also referred to as Gaussian and is 

most frequently represented as a bell curve in which the large majority of outcomes 

are bunched in a region of low severity with progressively fewer outcomes shown 

in the high severity region. Because the curve tails off steeply, highly extreme 

events are so rare as to be almost impossible. 

Value-at-Risk would be a fine methodology but for the fact that all three of these 

assumptions are wrong. Markets are not efficient. Future prices are not independent 

of the past. Risk is not normally distributed. As the saying goes, ‘‘Besides that, Mrs. 

Lincoln, how was the play?’’ Let’s take these points separately. 

Behavioral economics has done a masterful job of showing experimentally and empirically that investors do not behave rationally and that markets are not rational 

but are prone to severe shocks or mood swings. Examples are numerous but some 

of the best known are risk aversion (i.e., investors put more weight on avoiding risk 

than seeking gains), herd mentality (i.e., investors buy stocks when others are buying and sell when others are selling leading to persistent losses) and various seasonal effects. Prices do not smoothly and continuously move from one price level to 

the next but have a tendency to gap up or down in violent thrusts depriving investors of the chance to get out before large losses are incurred. 

Similarly, prices to not move randomly but are highly dependent on past price 

movements. In effect, relevant news will be discounted or ignored for sustained periods of time until a kind of tipping point is achieved at which point investors will 

react en masse to what is mostly old news mainly because other investors are doing 

likewise. This is why markets exhibit periods of low and high volatility in succession, why markets tend to overshoot in response to fundamental news and why investors can profit consistently by momentum trading which exploits an understanding of these dynamics. 

Finally, the normal distribution of risk has been known to be false at least since 

the early 1960’s when published studies of time series of prices showed price distributions to be shaped in what is known as a power curve rather than a bell curve. 

This has been borne out by many studies since. A power curve has fewer low impact 

events than the bell curve but has far more high impact events. This corresponds 

exactly to the actual market behavior we have seen including frequent extreme 

events such as the stock market crash of 1987, the Russian-LTCM collapse of 1998, 

the dot corn bubble collapse of 2000 and the housing collapse of 2007. Statistically 

these events should happen once every 1,000 years or so in a bell curve distribution 

but are expected with much greater frequency in a power curve distribution. In 

short, a power curve corresponds to market reality while a bell curve does not. 

How is it possible that our entire financial system has come to the point that it 

is risk managed by a completely incorrect system? 

The Nobelist, Daniel Kahneman, tells the story of a Swiss Army patrol lost in the 

Alps in a blizzard for days. Finally the patrol stumbles into camp, frostbitten but 

still alive. The Commander asks how they survived and the patrol leader replies, 

‘‘We had a map.’’ The Commander looks at the map and says, ‘‘This is a map of 

the Pyrenees; you were in the Alps.’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ comes the reply; ‘‘but we had a map.’’ 

The point is that sometimes bad guidance is better than no guidance; it gives you 

confidence and an ability to function even though your system is flawed. 

So it is with risk management on Wall Street. The current system, based on the 

idea that risk is distributed in the shape of a bell curve, is flawed and practitioners 

know it. Practitioners treat extreme events as outliers and develop mathematical 

fixes. They call extreme events fat tails and model them separately from the rest 

of the bell curve. They use stress tests to gauge the impact of extreme events. The 

problem is they never abandon the bell curve. They are like medieval astronomers 

who believe the sun revolves around the earth and are furiously tweaking their geocentric math in the face of contrary evidence. They will never get this right; they 

need their Copernicus. 

But the right map exists. It’s called a power curve. It says that events of any size 

can happen and extreme events happen more frequently than the bell curve predicts. There is no need to treat fat tails as a special case; they occur naturally on 

power curves. And power curves are well understood by scientists because they 

apply to extreme events in many natural and man-made systems from power outages to earthquakes. 

Power curve analysis is not new. The economist, Vilfredo Pareto, observed in 1906 

that wealth distributions in every society conform to a power curve; in effect, there 

is one Bill Gates for every 100 million average Americans. Benoit Mandelbrot pio-
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neered empirical analysis in the 1960’s that showed market prices move in power 

curve patterns. 

So why have we gone down the wrong path of random walks and normal distributions for the past 50 years? The history of science is filled with false paradigms that 

gained followers to the detriment of better science. People really did believe the sun 

revolved around the earth for 2,000 years and mathematicians had the equations 

to prove it. The sociologist, Robert K. Merton, called this the Matthew Effect from 

a New Testament verse that says, ‘‘For to those who have, more will be given . . .’’ 

The idea is that once an intellectual concept attracts a critical mass of supporters 

it becomes entrenched while other concepts are crowded out of the marketplace of 

ideas. 

Another reason is that practitioners of bell curve science became infatuated with 

the elegance of their mathematical solutions. The Black-Scholes options formula is 

based on bell curve type price movements. The derivatives market is based on variations of Black-Scholes. Wall Street has decided that the wrong map is better than 

no map at all—as long as the math is neat. 

Why haven’t scientists done more work in applying power curves to capital markets? Some excellent research has been done. But one answer is that power curves 

have low predictive value. Researchers approach this field to gain an edge in trading 

and once the edge fails to materialize they move on. But the Richter Scale, a classic 

power curve, also has low predictive value. That does not make earthquake science 

worthless. We know that 8.0 earthquakes are possible and we build cities accordingly even if we cannot know when the big one will strike. 

We can use power curve analysis to make our financial system more robust even 

if we cannot predict financial earthquakes. One lesson of power curves is that as 

you increase the scale of the system, the risk of a mega-earthquake goes up exponentially. If you increase the value of derivatives by a factor of 10, you may be increasing risk by a factor of 10,000 without even knowing it. This is not something 

that Wall Street or Washington currently comprehend. 

Let’s abandon the bell curve once and for all and accelerate empirical research 

into the proper risk metrics of event distributions. Even if predictive value is low, 

there is value in knowing the limits of our knowledge. Understanding the way risk 

metastasizes with scale might be lesson enough. It would offer a proper dose of humility to those trying to supersize banks and regulators.

Detailed Analysis—History of VaR Failures 

The empirical failures of the Efficient Market Hypothesis and VaR are well 

known. Consider the October 19, 1987 stock market crash in which the market fell 

22.6 percent in one day; the December 1994 Tequila Crisis in which the Mexican 

Peso fell 85 percent in one week; the September 1998 Russian-LTCM crisis in which 

capital markets almost ceased to function; the March 2000 dot corn collapse during 

which the NASDAQ fell 80 percent over 30 months, and the 9–11 attacks in which 

the NYSE first closed and then fell 14.3 percent in the week following its reopening. 

Of course, to this list of extreme events must now be added the financial crisis that 

began in July 2007. Events of this extreme magnitude should, according to VaR, either not happen at all because diversification will cause certain risks to cancel out 

and because rational buyers will seek bargains once valuations deviate beyond a 

certain magnitude, or happen perhaps once every 1,000 years (because standard deviations of this degree lie extremely close to the x-axis on the bell curve which corresponds to a value close to zero on the y-axis, i.e., an extremely low frequency 

event). The fact that all of these extreme events took place in just over 20 years 

is completely at odds with the predictions of VaR in a normally distributed paradigm. 

Practitioners treated these observations not as fatal flaws in VaR but rather as 

anomalies to be explained away within the framework of the paradigm. Thus was 

born the ‘‘fat tail’’ which is applied as an embellishment on the bell curve such that 

after approaching the x-axis (i.e., the extreme low frequency region), the curve flattens to intersect data points representing a cluster of highly extreme but not so 

highly rare events. No explanation is given for what causes such events; it is simply 

a matter of fitting the curve to the data (or ignoring the data) and moving on without disturbing the paradigm. This process of pinning a fat tail on the bell curve 

reached its apotheosis in the invention of generalized auto-regressive conditional 

heteroskedasicity or GARCH and its ilk, which are analytical techniques for modeling the section of the degree distribution curve containing the extreme events as 

a separate case and feeding the results of this modeling into a modified version of 

the curve. A better approach would have been to ask the question: if a normal distribution has a fat tail, is it really a normal distribution? 
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A Gaussian distribution is not the only possible degree distribution. One of the 

most common distributions in nature, which accurately describes many phenomena, 

is the power curve which shows that the severity of an event is inversely proportional to its frequency with the proportionality expressed as an exponent. When 

graphed on a double logarithmic scale, the power law describing financial markets 

risk is a straight line sloping downward from left to right; the negative exponent 

is the slope of the line. 

This difference is not merely academic. Gaussian and power curve distributions 

describe two entirely different phenomena. Power curves accurately describe a class 

of phenomena known as nonlinear dynamical systems which exhibit scale 

invariance, i.e., patterns are repeated at all scales. 

The field of nonlinear dynamical systems was enriched in the 1990s by the concept of self-organized criticality. The idea is that actions propagate throughout systems in a critical chain reaction. In the critical state, the probability that an action 

will propagate is roughly balanced by the probability that the original action will 

dissipate. In the subcritical state, the probability of extensive effects from the initial 

action is low. In the super-critical state, a single minor action can lead to a catastrophic collapse. Such states have long been observed in physical systems, e.g., nuclear chain reactions in uranium piles, where a small amount of uranium is relatively harmless (subcritical) and larger amounts can either be carefully controlled 

to produce desired energy (critical), or can be shaped to produce atomic explosions 

(supercritical). 

The theory of financial markets existing in a critical state cannot be tested in a 

laboratory or particle accelerator in the same fashion as theories of atomic physics. 

Instead, the conclusion that financial markets are a nonlinear critical state system 

rests on two non-experimental bases; one deductive, one inductive. The deductive 

basis is the ubiquity of power curves as a description of the behavior of a wide variety of complex systems in natural and social sciences, e.g., earthquakes, forest fires, 

sunspots, polarity, drought, epidemiology, population dynamics, size of cities, wealth 

distribution, etc. This is all part of a more general movement in many natural and 

social sciences from 19th and early 20th century equilibrium models to non-equilibrium models; this trend has now caught up with financial economics. 

The inductive basis is the large variety of capital markets behavior which has 

been empirically observed to fit well with the nonlinear paradigm. It is certainly 

more robust than VaR when it comes to explaining the extreme market movements 

described above. It is consistent with the fact that extreme events are not necessarily attributable to extreme causes but may arise spontaneously in the same initial conditions from routine causes. 

While extreme events occur with much greater than normal frequency in nonlinear critical state systems, these events are nevertheless limited by the scale of 

the system itself. If the financial system is a self-organized critical system, as both 

empirical evidence and deductive logic strongly suggest, the single most important 

question from a risk management perspective is: what is the scale of the system? 

Simply put, the larger the scale of the system, the greater the potential collapse 

with correlative macroeconomic and other real world effects. 

The news on this front is daunting. There is no normalized scale similar to the 

Richter Scale for measuring the size of markets or the size of disruptive events that 

occur within them, however, a few examples will make the point. According to recent estimates prepared by the McKinsey Global Institute, the ratio of world financial assets to world GDP grew from 100 percent in 1980 to 200 percent in 1993 to 

316 percent in 2005. Over the same period, the absolute level of global financial assets increased from $12 trillion to $140 trillion. The drivers of this exponential increase in scale are globalization, derivative products, and leverage. 

Globalization in this context is the integration of capital markets across national 

boundaries. Until recently there were specific laws and practices that had the effect 

of fragmenting capital markets into local or national venues with little interaction. 

Factors included withholding taxes, capital controls, protectionism, non-convertible 

currencies, licensing, regulatory and other restrictions that tilted the playing field 

in favor of local champions and elites. All of these impediments have been removed 

over the past 20 years to the point that the largest stock exchanges in the United 

States and Europe (NYSE and Euronext) now operate as a single entity. 

Derivative products have exhibited even faster growth than the growth in underlying financial assets. This stems from improved technology in the structuring, pricing, and trading of such instruments and the fact that the size of the derivatives 

market is not limited by the physical supply of any stock or commodity but may 

theoretically achieve any size since the underlying instrument is notional rather 

than actual. The total notional value of all swaps increased from $106 trillion to 

$531 trillion between 2002 and 2006. The notional value of equity derivatives in-
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creased from $2.5 trillion to $11.9 trillion over the same period while the notional 

value of credit default swaps increased from $2.2 trillion to $54.6 trillion. 

Leverage is the third element supporting the massive scaling of financial markets; margin debt of U.S. brokerage firms more than doubled from $134.58 billion to 

$293.2 billion from 2002 to 2007 while the amount of total assets per dollar of equity at major U.S. brokerage firms increased from approximately $20 to $26 in the 

same period. In addition, leveraged investors invest in other entities which use leverage to make still further investments. This type of layered leverage is impossible 

to unwind in a panic. 

There can be no doubt that capital markets are larger and more complex than 

ever before. In a dynamically complex critical system, this means that the size of 

the maximum possible catastrophe is exponentially greater than ever. Recalling that 

systems described by a power curve allow events of all sizes and that such events 

can occur at any time, particularly when the system is super-critical, the conclusion 

is inescapable that progressively greater financial catastrophes of the type we are 

experiencing today should be expected frequently. 

The more advanced risk practitioners have long recognized the shortcomings of 

using VaR in a normally distributed paradigm to compute risk measured in standard deviations from the norm. This is why they have added stress testing as an alternative or blended factor in their models. Such stress testing rests on historically 

extreme events such as the market reaction to 9–11 or the stock market crash of 

1987. However, this methodology has its own flaws since the worst outcomes in a 

dynamically complex critical State system are not bounded by history but are only 

bounded by the scale of the system itself. Since the system is larger than ever, there 

is nothing in historical experience that provides a guide to the size of the largest 

catastrophe that can arise today. The fact that the financial crisis which began in 

July 2007 has lasted longer, caused greater losses and been more widespread both 

geographically and sectorally than most analysts predicted or can explain is because 

of the vastly greater scale of the financial system which produces an exponentially 

greater catastrophe than has ever occurred before. This is why the past is not a 

guide and why the current crisis may be expected to produce results as severe as 

the Great Depression of 1929–1941.

Policy Approaches and Recommendations 

A clear understanding of the structures and vulnerabilities of the financial markets points the way to solutions and policy recommendations. These recommendations fall into the categories of limiting scale, controlling cascades, and securing informational advantage. 

To explain the concept of limiting scale, a simple example will suffice. If the U.S. 

power grid east of the Mississippi River were at no point connected to the power 

grid west of the Mississippi River, a nationwide power failure would be an extremely low probability event. Either the ‘‘east system’’ or the ‘‘west system’’ could 

fail catastrophically in a cascading manner but both systems could not fail simultaneously except for entirely independent reasons because there are no nodes in common to facilitate propagation across systems. In a financial context, governments 

should give consideration to preventing mergers that lead to globalized stock and 

bond exchanges and universal banks. The first order efficiencies of such mergers are 

outweighed by the risks of large-scale failure especially if those risks are not properly understood and taken into account. 

Another example will help to illustrate the relationship between the scale of a system and extent of the greatest catastrophe possible in that system. Imagine a vessel 

with a large hold. The hold is divided into three equal sections separated by watertight bulkheads. If a hole is punched in one section and that section is completely 

filled with water, the vessel will still float. Now imagine the watertight bulkheads 

are removed and the same hole is punched into the vessel. In this case, the entire 

hold will fill with water and the vessel will sink. In this example, the area of the 

hold can be thought of as the relevant dynamic system. The sinking of the vessel 

represents the catastrophic failure of the system. When the bulkheads are in place 

we have three small systems. When the bulkheads are removed we have one large 

system. By removing the bulkheads we increased the scale of the system by a factor 

of three. But the likelihood of failure did not increase by a factor of three; it went 

from practically zero to practically 100 percent. The system size tripled but the risk 

of sinking went up exponentially. By removing the bulkheads we created what engineers call a ‘‘single point of failure,’’ i.e., one hole is now enough to sink the entire 

vessel. 

Something similar happened to our financial system between 1999 and 2004. This 

began with the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 which can be thought of as removing the watertight bulkheads separating commercial banks and investment banks. 
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This was exacerbated by the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which 

removed the prohibition on many kinds of derivatives. This allowed banks to increase the scale of the system through off-balance sheet transactions. Finally, in 

2004, the SEC amended the broker-dealer net capital rule in such a way that allowed brokers to go well-beyond the traditional 15:1 leverage ratio and to use leverage of 30:1 or more. All three of these events increased the scale of the system by 

allowing regulated financial institutions to enter new markets, trade new products 

and use increased leverage. Using a power curve analysis, we see that while the 

scale of the system was increased in a linear way (by a factor of three, five, ten or 

fifty depending on the product) the risk was increasing in a nonlinear way (by a 

factor of 100, 1000, or 10,000 depending on the slope of the power curve). VaR models based on normal distributions were reporting that risk was under control and 

sounding the all clear signal because so much of the risk was offsetting or seen to 

cancel out in the models. However, a power curve model would have been flashing 

a red alert sign because it does not depend on correlations, instead it sees risk as 

an emergent property and an exponential function of scale. 

The fact that government opened the door to instability does not necessarily mean 

that the private sector had to rush through the door to embrace the brave new 

world of leveraged risk. For that we needed VaR. Without VaR models to tell bankers that risk was under control, managers would not have taken so much risk even 

if government rules allowed them to do so. Self-interest would have constrained 

them somewhat as Greenspan expected. But with VaR models telling senior management that risk was contained the new government rules became an open invitation to pile on massive amounts of risk which bankers promptly did. 

Our financial system was relatively stable from 1934–1999 despite occasional failures of institutions (such as Continental Illinois Bank) and entire sectors (such as 

the S&L industry). This 65-year period can be viewed as the golden age of compartmented banking and moderate leverage under Glass-Steagall and the SEC’s original 

net capital rule. Derivatives themselves were highly constrained by the Commodity 

Exchange Act. In 1999, 2000 and 2004 respectively, all three of these watertight 

bulkheads were removed. By 2006 the system was poised for the most catastrophic 

financial collapse in history. While subprime mortgage failures provided the catalyst, it was the scale of the system itself which caused the damage. The catalyst 

could just as well have come from emerging markets, commercial real estate or credit default swaps. In a dynamically critical system, the catalyst is always less important than the chain reaction and the reaction in this case was a massive collapse. 

The idea of controlling cascades of failure is, in part, a matter of circuit breakers 

and pre-rehearsed crisis management so that nascent collapses do not spin into full 

systemic catastrophes before regulators have the opportunity to prevent the spread. 

The combination of diffuse credit and layered leverage makes it infeasible to assemble all of the affected parties in a single room to discuss solutions. There simply is 

not enough time or condensed information to respond in real time as a crisis 

unfolds. 

One significant circuit breaker which has been discussed for over a decade but 

which has still not been fully implemented is a clearinghouse for all over-thecounter derivatives. Experience with clearinghouses and netting systems such as the 

Government Securities Clearing Corporation shows that gross risk can be reduced 

90 percent or more when converted to net risk through the intermediation of a 

clearinghouse. Bearing in mind that a parametric decrease in scale produces an exponential decrease in risk in a nonlinear system, the kind of risk reduction that 

arises in a clearinghouse can be the single most important step in the direction of 

stabilizing the financial system today; much more powerful than bail outs which do 

not reduce risk but merely bury it temporarily. 

A clearinghouse will also provide informational transparency that will allow regulators to facilitate the failure of financial institutions without producing contagion 

and systemic risk. Such failure (what Joseph Schumpeter called ‘‘creative destruction’’) is another necessary step on the road to financial recovery. Technical objections to clearinghouse implementation based on the non-uniformity of contracts can 

be overcome easily through consensual contractual modification with price adjustments upon joining the clearinghouse enforced by the understanding that those who 

refuse to join will be outside the safety net. Only by eliminating zombie institutions 

and creating breathing room for healthy institutions with sound balance sheets can 

the financial sector hope to attract sufficient private capital to replace government 

capital and thus re-start the credit creation process needed to produce sound economic growth. 

Recently a number of alternative paradigms have appeared which not only do not 

rely on VaR but rather assume its opposite and build models that are more robust 

to empirical evidence and market price patterns. Several of these approaches are:
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Behavioral Economics—This field relies on insights into human behavior derived 

from social science and psychology, in particular, the ‘‘irrational’’ nature of human 

decision-making when faced with economic choices. Insights include risk aversion, 

herding, the presence or absence of cognitive diversity and network effects among 

others. While not summarized in a general theory and while not always amendable 

to quantitative modeling, the insights of behavioral economics are powerful and 

should be considered in weighing reliance on VaR-style models which do not make 

allowance for subjective influences captured in this approach.

Imperfect Knowledge Economics—This discipline (under the abbreviation IKE) 

attempts to deal with uncertainty inherent in capital markets by using a combination of Bayesian networks, link analysis, causal inference and probabilistic 

hypotheses to fill in unknowns using the known. This method is heavily dependent 

on the proper construction of paths and the proper weighing of probabilities in each 

hypothesis cell or evidence cell, however, used properly it can guide decision-making 

without applying the straitjacket of VaR.

Econoahysics—This is a branch of financial economics which uses insights gained 

from physics to model capital markets behavior. These insights include nonlinearity 

in dynamic critical state systems the concept of phase transitions. Such systems exhibit an unpredictably deterministic nonlinear relationship between inputs and outputs (the so-called ‘‘Butterfly Effect’’) and scale invariance which accords well with 

actual time series of capital markets prices. Importantly, this field leads to a degree 

distribution characterized by the power curve rather than the bell curve with implications for scaling metrics in the management of systemic risk. 

It may be the case that these risk management tools work best at distinct scales. 

For example, behavioral economics seems to work well at the level of individual decision-making but has less to offer at the level of the system as a whole where complex feedback loops cloud its efficacy. IKE may work best at the level of a single 

institution where the hypothesis and evidence cells can be reasonably well defined 

and populated. Econophysics may work best at the systemic level because it goes 

the furthest in its ability to model highly complex dynamics. This division of labor 

suggests that rather than replacing VaR with a one-size-fits-all approach, it may be 

best to adopt a nested hierarchy of risk management approaches resembling the following:

While all of these approaches and others not mentioned here require more research to normalize metrics and build general theories, they are efficacious and robust alternatives to EMH and VaR and their development and use can serve a stabilizing function since they have a strong empirical basis unlike EMH and VaR. 

In summary, Wall Street’s reigning risk management paradigm consisting of VaR 

using a normally distributed model combined with GARCH techniques applied to 

the non-normal region and stress testing to account for outliers is a manifest failure. 

It should be replaced at the systemic level with the empirically robust model based 

on nonlinear complexity and critical state dynamics as described by the power 

curve. This method also points the way to certain solutions, most importantly the 

creation of an over-the-counter derivatives clearinghouse which will de-scale the system and lead to an exponential decrease in actual risk. Such a clearinghouse can 
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also be used to improve transparency and manage failure in ways that can leave 

the system far healthier while avoiding systemic collapse. 

Importantly, if scale is the primary determinant of risk, as appears to be the case 

in complex systems such as the financial markets, then it follows that de-scaling the 

system is the simplest and most effective way to manage risk. This does not mean 

that the totality of the system needs to shrink, merely that it be divided into subcomponents with limited interaction. This has the same effect as installing the watertight bulkheads referred to in the example above. In this manner, severe financial distress in one sector does not automatically result in contagion among all sectors. 

This effective de-scaling can be accomplished with three reforms:

1. The enactment of a modernized version of Glass-Steagall with a strict separation 

between commercial banking and deposit taking on the one hand and principal 

risk taking in capital markets on the other.

2. Strict requirements for all derivative products to be traded on exchanges subject 

to credit tests for firm memberships, initial margin, variation margin, position 

limits, price transparency and netting.

3. Higher regulatory capital requirements and reduced leverage for banks and 

broker-dealers. Traditional ratios of 8:1 for banks and 15:1 for brokers seem adequate provided off-balance sheet positions (other than exchange traded contracts 

for which adequate margin is posted) be included for this purpose.

These rules can be implemented directly and do not depend on the output of arcane and dangerous models such as VaR. Instead, they derive from another proven 

model, the power curve, which teaches that risk is an exponential function of scale. 

By de-scaling, we radically reduce risk and restore stability to individual institutions and to the system as a whole.

BIOGRAPHY FOR JAMES G. RICKARDS

James G. Rickards is Senior Managing Director for Market Intelligence at Omnis, 

Inc., a scientific consulting firm in McLean, VA. He is also Principal of Global–I Advisors, LLC, an investment banking firm specializing in capital markets and geopolitics. Mr. Rickards is a seasoned counselor, investment banker and risk manager 

with over thirty years experience in capital markets including all aspects of portfolio 

management, risk management, product structure, regulation and operations. Mr. 

Rickards’s market experience is focused in alternative investing and derivatives in 

global markets. 

Mr. Rickards was a first hand participant in the formation and growth of 

globalized capital markets and complex derivative trading strategies. He held senior 

executive positions at sell side firms (Citibank and RBS Greenwich Capital Markets) 

and buy side firms (Long-Term Capital Management and Caxton Associates) and 

technology firms (OptiMark and Omnis). Mr. Rickards has participated directly in 

many of the most significant financial events over the past 30 years including the 

release of U.S. hostages in Iran (1981), the Stock Market crash of 1987, the collapse 

of Drexel (1990), the Salomon Bros. bond trading scandal (1991) and the LTCM financial crisis of 1998 (in which Mr. Rickards was the principal negotiator of the government-sponsored rescue). He has founded several hedge funds and fund-of-funds. 

His advisory clients include private investment funds, investment banks and government directorates. Since 2001, Mr. Rickards has applied his financial expertise 

to missions for the benefit of the U.S. national security community. 

Mr. Rickards is licensed to practice law in New York and New Jersey and the 

Federal Courts. Mr. Rickards has held all major financial industry licenses including Series 3 (National Commodities Futures), Series 7 (General Securities Representative), Series 24 (General Securities Principal), Series 30 (Futures Manager) 

and Series 63. 

Mr. Rickards has been a frequent speaker at conferences sponsored by bar associations and industry groups in the fields of derivatives and hedge funds and is active in the International Bar Association. He has been the interviewed in The Wall 

Street Journal and on CNBC, Fox, CNN, NPR and C-SPAN and is an OpEd contributor to the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Mr. Rickards is a graduate school visiting lecturer in finance at the Kellogg School 

and the School of Advanced International Studies. He has delivered papers on 

econophysics at the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mr. Rickards has written articles published in academic and professional 

journals in the fields of strategic studies, cognitive diversity, network science and 

risk management. He is a member of the Business Advisory Board of Shariah Cap-
117

ital, Inc., an advisory firm specializing in Islamic finance and is a member of the 

International Business Practices Advisory Panel to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) Support Group of the Director of National 

Intelligence. 

Mr. Rickards holds the following degrees: LL.M. (Taxation) from the New York 

University School of Law; J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School; 

M.A. in international economics from the School of Advanced International Studies, 

Washington DC; and a B.A. degree with honors from the School of Arts & Sciences 

of The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

Chairman MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Rickards. I did practice repeatedly saying ‘‘Taleb.’’ I should have practiced ‘‘Rickards’’ as well. 

Mr. Whalen. 

STATEMENT OF MR. CHRISTOPHER WHALEN, MANAGING 

DIRECTOR, INSTITUTIONAL RISK ANALYTICS 

Mr. WHALEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to just summarize a couple points further to my written testimony. You will 

notice in my comments I focused on the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, and I think this committee is probably better 

placed to understand those distinctions than most of the other panels in the Congress. 

You know, we have seen over the last 100 years in this country 

a shift in our financial world from focusing on current performance 

of companies and financial institutions to focusing on predicting 

the future. This is very well illustrated in the Graham and Dodd 

volume, Securities Analysis, in chapter 38 where they talk about 

new era investing, and I urge you to reread that if you have never 

done so before. 

The bottom line to me as someone who has worked in the industry as a supervisor and a trader and investment banker, is that 

when you use assumptions and models, you have already stepped 

off the deep edge, you know, the deep end of the pool, and there’s 

no water in the pool. You essentially are in the world of speculation, and you have left the world of investing. Why do I say this? 

Well, if we use the same rules that govern the assumptions that 

go into most VaR models to design airplanes and buildings and 

dams, all of these physical structures would fail, because they violate the basic rules of scientific method that the Members of this 

committee know very, very well. I would submit to you that if we 

are going to allow our financial system to design products that are 

based on assumptions rather than hard data, than we are in big 

trouble. My firm has over the last seven years shunned the quantitative world. Our entire methodology is focused on benchmarking 

the current performance of banks, and taking observations about 

that current performance that may suggest what they are going to 

do in the future. But we don’t guess, we don’t speculate. We have 

almost 20,000 retail customers who use the bank monitor to track 

the safety and soundness of their institution. It is an entirely mechanical survey process. We stress-test every bank in the United 

States the same way, whether it is J.P. Morgan or Cullen/Frost 

Bank in Texas. We ask the same question, how did you do this 

quarter, and we compare it to 1995, which was a nice, boring year. 

The second point I would like to make is that I think a big part 

of the problem is that we allowed the economist profession to escape from the world of social sciences, and enter into an unholy 
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union with commission-driven dealers in the securities market. 

Your colleague, Mr. Broun, said earlier that economists can’t make 

up their mind. Well, yes, they can. When they are working in the 

securities business they have no trouble making up their mind. 

They offer opinions and hypotheses and ‘what if’ or ‘I want’ in regards to the creation of a security. This is a big problem. I wouldn’t 

let most economists park my car, and the problem is not that they 

are not smart people, not that they are not interesting people, but 

they live in the world of supposition rather than the world of fact, 

and again, their methodologies are not governed by the iron rules 

that you find in physics or chemistry or any of the other physical 

sciences where you have to live by those rules. You can’t come up 

with some neat concept and say to your colleagues, hey, look at me, 

or hey, look at this new CDO I designed, and then go out and sell 

that security to the public. 

I think it all comes down at the end of the day to what kind of 

economy do we want. There is an old-fashioned American concept 

called ‘fair dealing’ that I spent a lot of time talking in my testimony to the Senate Banking Committee earlier this year, and it 

comes from the Greeks, the concept of proportional requital. One 

person gives value, the other person receives value. The problem 

with products like credit default swaps, is that they are entirely 

speculative. There is no visible underlying market for single-name 

credit default swaps really. The corporate bonds that are supposedly the derivative or the basis for the derivative are fairly liquid and not a very good source of pricing information, so we use 

models and we then sell these securities to anyone and everyone. 

I would submit that that is unfair, and it goes against the basic 

grain of American society that we are a fair and transparent nation. So bottom line to me is, if you want to fix the problem, I think 

we have got to reimpose not higher capital requirements on banks 

that are out of control, and which take risks that no one can really 

quantify. I think what we have to do is reimpose restrictions on 

their risk taking and get them to the point where an eight percent 

capital assets ratio makes sense again, because it clearly doesn’t 

now. Does anybody really think we can get the private sector to 

double the capital of J.P. Morgan when their equity returns are 

going to be falling for the next couple of years? The only entity that 

would fund that opportunity would be a government, so what we 

are really saying is that these are GSEs. I think we have got to 

come back almost to the Glass-Steagall-era draconian division between the utility function of a bank and the transactional function 

of hedge funds, broker dealers, whatever, and that latter group can 

do whatever they want. 

So let me stop there, and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Whalen follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER WHALEN

Chairman Miller, Congressman Broun, Members of the Committee, my name is 

Christopher Whalen and I live in the State of New York. I work in the financial 

community as an analyst and a principal of a firm that rates the performance of 
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1Mr. Whalen is a co-founder of Institutional Risk Analytics, a Los Angeles unit of Lord, 

Whalen LLC that publishes risk ratings and provides customized financial analysis and valuation tools. 2See ‘‘New Hope for Financial Economics: Interview with Bill Janeway,’’ The Institutional 

Risk Analyst, November 17, 2008. 

commercial banks.1 Thank you for inviting my comments today on this important 

subject. 

The Committee has asked witnesses to comment on the topic of ‘‘The Risks of Financial Modeling: VaR and the Economic Meltdown.’’ The comments below reflect 

my own views, as well as comments from my colleague and business partner Dennis 

Santiago, and others in the financial and risk management community. 

By way of background, our firm provides ratings for assessing the financial condition of U.S. banks and commercial companies. We build the analytical tools that we 

use to support these rating activities and produce reports for thousands of consumer 

and professional users. 

We use mathematical tools such as models to explore the current financial behavior of a given subject. In the course of our work, we use these tools to make estimates, for example, as to the maximum probable loss in a bank’s loan portfolio 

through an economic cycle or the required Economic Capital for a financial institution. Models help us understand and illustrate how the financial condition of a bank 

or other obliger have changed and possibly will change in the future. 

But in all that we at Institutional Risk Analytics do in the world of ratings and 

financial analysis, we do our best to separate objective measures based upon empirical observations, and subjective analyses that employ speculative assumptions and 

directives which are often inserted into the very ground rules for the analysis process itself. The difference between subjectivity and objectivity in finance has significant implications for national policy when it comes to financial markets and institutions. 

I strongly suggest to the Committee that they bear the distinction between objective and subjective measures in mind when discussing the use of models in finance. 

Obtaining a better understanding of the role of inserting subjectivity into models 

is critical for distinguishing between useful deployments of modeling to manage risk 

and situations where models are the primary failure pathway towards creating systemic risk and thus affect economic stability and public policy. 

Used as both a noun and a verb, the word ‘‘model’’ has become the symbol for 

the latest financial crisis because of the use, or more precisely, the misuse of such 

simulations to price unregistered, illiquid securities such as sub-prime mortgage 

backed securities and derivatives of such securities. The anecdotal cases where errant models have led to mischief are many and are not limited to the world of finance alone.

The Trouble with Models 

The problem is not with models themselves. The trouble happens when they are 

(a) improperly constructed and then (b) deliberately misapplied by individuals working in the financial markets. 

In the physical sciences, models can be very usefully employed to help analysts 

understand complex systems such as disease, buildings and aircraft. These models 

tend to use observable data as inputs, can be scientifically validated and are codified 

in a manner that is transparent to all involved in the process. Models used in the 

physical world share one thing in common that financial models do not: they are 

connected to and are confirmed or refuted by the physical world they describe. 

Financial models, on the other hand, are all intellectual abstractions designed to 

manipulate arbitrarily chosen, human invented concepts. The chief reason for this 

digression from the objective use of models observed in the physical sciences is the 

injection of economics into the world of finance. Whereas financial models were once 

merely arithmetic expressions of expected cash flows, today in the world of financial 

economics, models have become vehicles for rampant speculation and outright 

fraud.2

In the world of finance, modeling has been an important part of the decision-making toolkit of executives and analysts for centuries, helping them to understand the 

various components in a company or a market and thereby adjust to take advantage 

of the circumstances. These decision analysis models seek to measure and report on 

key indicators of actual performance and confirm the position of the entity with respect to its’ competitive environment. For instance, the arithmetic calculation of 

cash flows adheres to the scientific method of structures and dynamics, and is the 

foundation of modern finance as embodied by the great theorists such as Benjamin 

Graham and David Dodd. 
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At our firm, we employ a ‘‘measure and report’’ model called The IRA Bank Monitor to survey and stress test all FDIC insured banks each quarter. By bench-marking the performance of banks with a consistent set of tests, we are able to not only 

characterize the relative safety and soundness of each institution, but can drawn 

reasonable inferences about the bank’s future performance. 

But when the world of finance marries the world of outcome driven economics—

the world of ‘‘what if’’ and ‘‘I want’’—models cease to be mechanistic tools for validating current outcomes with hard data and assessing a reasonable range of possible future events. Instead models become enablers for speculation, for the use of 

skillful canards and legal subterfuge that ultimately cheat investors and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in losses to private investors and insured depository institutions. 

Take the world of mortgage backed securities or MBS. For decades the investment 

community had been using relatively simple models to predict the cash flow of MBS 

in various interest rate scenarios. These predictions have been relatively simple and 

are validated against the monthly mortgage servicer data available to the analyst 

community. The MBS securitization process was simple as well. A bank would sell 

conforming loans to GNMA and FNMA, and sell inferior collateral to a handful of 

investment banks on Wall Street to turn in the loans into private MBS issues. 

At the beginning of the 1990’s, however, Wall Street’s private MBS secret sauce 

escaped. A firm named Drexel, Burnham, Lambert went bankrupt and the bankruptcy court sold copies of Drexel’s structured finance software to anyone and everyone. It eventually wound up in the hands of the mortgage issuers themselves. These 

banks and non-banks naturally began to issue private MBS by themselves and discovered they could use the mathematics of modeling to grow their mortgage conduit 

businesses into massive cash flow machines. When brought to market, these private 

MBS were frequently under-collateralized and could therefore be described as a 

fraud. 

Wall Street, in turn, created even more complex modeling systems to squeeze even 

more profits from the original MBS template. The expanding bubble of financial innovation caught the eye of policy-makers in the Congress, who then created political 

models envisioning the possibility that ‘‘innovation’’ could be used to make housing 

accessible to more Americans. 

Spurred on to chase the ‘‘policy outcome’’ of affordable housing, an entire range 

of deliberately opaque and highly leveraged financial instruments were born with 

the full support of Washington, the GSEs and the Congress. Their purpose now was 

to use the alchemy of financial modeling to create the appearance of mathematical 

safety out of dangerous toxic ingredients. Wall Street firms paid the major rating 

agencies to award ‘‘AAA’’ ratings to derivative assets that were ultimately based on 

sub-prime mortgage debt. And the stage was set for a future economic disaster. 

In the case of sub-prime toxic waste, the models became so complex that all transparency was lost. The dealers of unregulated, unregistered complex structured assets used proprietary models to price and sell deals, but since the ‘‘underlying’’ for 

these derivative securities was invisible, none of the investment or independent ratings community could model the security. There was no validation, no market discipline. Buy Side customers were dependent upon the dealer who sold them the 

toxic waste for valuation. The dealers that controlled the model often time would 

not even make a market in the security. 

Clearly we have now many examples where a model or the pretense of a model 

was used as a vehicle for creating risk and hiding it. More important, however, is 

the role of financial models for creating opportunities for deliberate acts of securities 

fraud. These acts of fraud have caused hundreds of billions of dollars in losses to 

depository institutions and investors. 

Whether you talk about toxic mortgage assets or credit default swaps, the one 

common element that the misuse of models seems to contain is a lack of a visible 

underlying market against which to judge or ‘‘mark’’ the model. Indeed, the use of 

models in a subjective context seems to include the simulation of a nonexistent market as the primary role for the financial model. 

In single-name credit default swaps or ‘‘CDS’’ for example, there is often insufficient trading in the supposed underlying corporate debt security to provide true 

price discovery. In the case of CDS on complex structured assets, there is no underlying market to observe at all. The subjective model becomes the market in terms 

of pricing the security. 

In the spring of 2007, however, the fantasy land consensus that allowed people 

to believe that a model is a market came undone. We have been dealing with the 

consequences of the decisions that originally built the house of cards since that time.
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3See Taleb, Nassim, ‘‘Against Value-at-Risk: Nassim Taleb Replies to Philippe Jorion,’’ 1997. 

An Objective Basis for Finance and Regulation 

The term ‘‘model’’ as it applies to finance can be a simulation of reality in terms 

of predicting future financial outcomes. The author Nassim Taleb, who is appearing 

at this hearing, says the term ‘‘VaR’’ or value at risk describes a statistical estimate 

of ‘‘the expected maximum loss (or worst loss) over a target horizon within a given 

confidence interval.’’ 3

VaR models and similar statistical methods pretend to estimate the largest possible loss that an investor might experience over a given period of time to a given 

degree of certainty. The use of VaR type models, including the version embedded 

in the Basel II agreement, involves a number of assumptions about risk and outcomes that are speculative. More important, the widespread use of these statistical 

models for risk management suggest that financial institutions are subject to occasional ‘‘Black Swans’’ in the form of risk events that cannot be anticipated. 

We take a different view. We don’t actually believe there is such a thing as a 

‘‘Black Swan.’’ Our observations tell us that a more likely explanation is that leaders in finance and politics simply made the mistake of, again, believing in what 

were in fact flawed models and blinded themselves to what should have been plainly 

calculable innovation risks destined to be unsustainable. Or worse, our leaders in 

Washington and on Wall Street decided to be short sighted and not care about the 

inevitable debacle. 

We suggest that going forward our national interest needs to demand a higher 

standard of tangible proof from ‘‘outcome designers’’ of public policies. If financial 

markets and the models used to describe them are limited to those instruments that 

can be verified objectively, then we no longer need to fear from the ravages of Black 

Swans or systemic risk. The source of systemic risk in the financial markets is fear 

born from the complexity of opaque securities for which there is no underlying basis. 

The pretext for issuing these ersatz securities depends on subjectivity injected into 

a flawed model. 

If we accept that the sudden change in market conditions or the ‘‘Black Swan’’ 

event that Taleb and other theorists have so elegantly described arises from a 

breakdown in prudential regulation and basic common sense, and not from some unknowable market mechanism, then we no longer need to fear surprises or systemic 

risk. We need to simply ensure that all of the financial instruments in our marketplace have an objective basis, including a visible, cash basis market that is visible 

to all market participants. If investors cannot price a security without reference to 

subjective models, then the security should be banned from the U.S. markets as a 

matter of law and regulation. To do otherwise is to adopt deception as the public 

policy goal of the U.S. when it comes to financial markets regulation. 

As Graham and Dodd wrote nearly a century ago, the more speculative the inputs 

the less the analysis matters. Models only have real value to society when their 

workings are disciplined by the real world. When investors, legislators and regulators all mistook models for markets, and even accepted such speculations as a 

basis for regulating banks and governing over-the-counter or OTC markets for all 

types of securities, we as a nation were gambling with our patrimony. If the Committee and the Congress want to bring an end to the financial crisis, we must demand higher standards from our citizens who work in and regulate our financial 

markets. 

As we discussed in a commentary last month, ‘‘Systemic Risk: Is it Black Swans 

or Market Innovations?,’’ published in The Institutional Risk Analyst, ‘‘were the failures of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual or the other ‘‘rare’’ 

events really anomalous? Or are we just making excuses for our collective failure 

to identify and manage risk? A copy of our commentary follows this testimony. I 

look forward to your questions.
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Systemic Risk: Is it Black Swans

or Market Innovations? 

AUGUST 18, 2009

‘‘Whatever you think you know about the distribution changes the distribution.’’

Alex Pollock 

American Enterprise Institute

In this week’s issue of The IRA, our friend and colleague Richard Alford, a former 

Fed of New York economist, and IRA founders Dennis Santiago and Chris Whalen, 

ask us whether we really see Black Swans in market crises or our own expectations. 

Of note, we will release our preliminary Q2 Banking Stress Index ratings on Monday, August 24, 2009. As with Q1, these figures represent about 90 percent of all 

FDIC insured depositories, but exclude the largest money center banks (aka the 

‘‘Stress Test Nineteen’’), thus providing a look at the state of the regional and community banks as of the quarter ended June 30, 2009. Click here to register for The Institutional Risk Analyst.

Many popular explanations of recent financial crises cite ‘‘Black Swan’’ events; extreme, unexpected, ‘‘surprise’’ price movements, as the causes of the calamity. However, in looking at our crisis wracked markets, we might consider that the Black 

Swan hypothesis doesn’t fit the facts as well an alternative explanation: namely that 

the speculative outburst of financial innovation and the artificially low, short-run 

interest rate environment pursued by the Federal Open Market Committee, combined to change the underlying distribution of potential price changes. This shift in 

the composition of the distribution made likely outcomes that previously seemed impossible or remote. This shift in possible outcomes, in turn, generated surprise in 

the markets and arguably led to the emergence of ‘‘systemic risk’’ as a metaphor 

to explain these apparent ‘‘anomalies.’’

But were the failures of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual or 

the other ‘‘rare’’ events really anomalous? Or are we just making excuses for our 

collective failure to identify and manage risk? 

The choice of which hypothesis to ultimately accept in developing the narrative 

description of the causation of the financial crisis has strategic implications for understanding as well as reducing the likelihood of future crisis, including the effect 

on the safety and soundness of financial institutions. To us, the hard work is not 

trying to specifically limit the range of possibilities with artificial assumptions, but 

to model risk when you must assume as a hard rule, like the rules which govern 

the physical sciences, that the event distribution is in constant flux. 

If we as financial and risk professional are serious in claims to model risk 

proactively, then change, not static assumptions, must be the rule in terms of the 

possible outcomes. Or ‘‘paranoid and nimble’’ in practical terms. After all, these 

modeling exercises ultimately inform and support risk assumptions for decisions 

that are used in value-at-risk (VaR) assessments for investors and for capital adequacy bench-marking for financial institutions. 

Even before the arrival of Benoit Mandelbrot in the 1960s, researchers had observed that distributions of price changes in various markets were not normally distributed. The observed distributions of price changes had fatter tails than the normal distribution. Nassim Nicolas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by 

Randomness, and others have dubbed significantly larger extreme price moves than 

those predicted by a normal distribution as ‘‘Black Swans.’’ Indeed, Taleb and others 

have linked Black Swan price change events to the recent financial crisis, suggesting in effect that we all collectively misunderstood on which side of the distribution of possible risk outcomes we stood. 

The argument is as follows: Current risk management and derivative pricing regimes are based upon normal distributions. Price movements in the recent financial 

crises were unpredictable/low probability events that were also greater than predicted by normal distribution models. Hence our collective failure to anticipate 

Black Swan events is ‘‘responsible’’ for the recent crises as mis-specified risk management models failed due to fatter than normal tails. 

The alternative explanation, however, links the extreme price movements not to 

aberrations with respect to a stable, observable mean, but instead to the activation 

of alternate stable means as a result of jumping discontinuously through tipping 

points—much in the same way particles jump quantum levels in energy states when 

subjected to the cumulative effects of energy being added to or removed from their 

environments. These tipping points are as predictable as the annual migrations of 
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ducks. Swans, alas, rarely migrate, preferring to stay in their summer feeding 

grounds until the water freezes, then move only far enough to find open water. 

Sound familiar? 

Force feed a system with enough creative energy via permissive public policies 

and the resulting herd behaviors, and the system will change to align around these 

new norms, thereby erasing the advantages of the innovators and creating unforeseen hazards. ‘‘Advances’’ such as OTC derivatives and complex structured assets, 

and very accommodating Fed interest rate policy, resulted in unprecedented leverage and maturity mismatches by institutions and in markets that are the perfect 

quantum fuel to brew such change. 

While the exact timing of each tipping point and magnitude of the crises remains 

somewhat inexact, the waves of change and the ultimate crisis borne shift are 

broadly predictable. The probabilities attached to extreme price moves are calculable 

as the cost of deleveraging an accumulation of innovation risk that must be shed 

as the system realigns. The ‘‘Black Swan’’ approach assumes a stable distribution 

of price changes with fatter than ‘‘normal’’ tails. The alternative posits that the distribution of possible price changes was altered by innovation and the low cost of leverage. It also posits that the new distributions allowed, indeed require, more extreme price movements. Two examples will illustrate the alternative hypothesis. 

Once upon a time, the convertible bond market was relatively quiet. The buy side 

was dominated by real money (unleveraged) players who sought the safety of bonds, 

but were willing to give up some return for some upside risk (the embedded equity 

call option). 

More recently the market has been dominated by leveraged hedge funds doing 

convertible bond arbitrage. They bought the bonds, hedging away the various risks. 

In response to the advent of the arbitrageurs, the spread between otherwise similar 

conventional and convertible bonds moved to more accurately reflect the value of the 

embedded option and became less volatile. 

When the financial crises hit, however, arbitrageurs were forced to liquidate their 

positions as losses mounted and it became difficult to fund the leveraged positions. 

Prices for convertible bonds declined and for a period were below prices for similar 

conventional bonds—something that had been both unheard of and considered impossible as the value of an option cannot be negative. 

Was this a Black Swan type event, or had the market for convertible bonds and 

the underlying distribution of price changes, been altered? The mean spread between otherwise similar conventional and convertible bonds had changed. The volatility of the spread had changed. Forced sales and the public perception of possible 

future forced sales generated unprecedented behavior of the heretofore stable 

spread. The emergence and then dominance of leveraged arbitrage positions altered 

the market in fundamental ways. What had not been possible had become possible. 

Now consider bank exposures to commercial real estate. Numerous financial institutions, hedge funds (e.g., at Bear Stearns), sellers of CDS protection (e.g., AIG) and 

banks (many of them foreign as reflected in the Fed swap lines with foreign central 

banks) suffered grievous losses when the real estate bubble popped. Much of these 

losses remain as yet unrealized. 

As investors and regulators demanded asset-write downs and loss realization, 

many of these institution expressed dismay. They had stressed tested their portfolios, the large banks complained, often with the support of regulators. The large 

banks thought their geographically diversified portfolios of MBSs immunize them 

from falls in real estate prices as the US had experienced regional, but never (except 

for the 1930s) nationwide declines in housing prices. These sophisticated banks incorporated that assumption into their stress test even as they and the securitization 

process were nationalizing—that is, changing—the previously regional and local 

mortgage markets. 

Was the nationwide decline in housing prices an unpredictable Black Swan event 

or the foreseeable result of lower lending standards, a supportive interest rate environment, and financial innovation the led to the temporary nationalization of the 

mortgage market? Risk management regimes failed and banks have been left with 

unrealized losses that still threaten the solvency of the entire system in Q3 2009. 

However useful or necessary ‘‘normal’’ statistical measures such as VaR might be, 

it will not be sufficient to insulate institutions or the system from risk arising from 

rapidly evolving market structures and practices. Furthermore, insofar as models 

such as VaR, which are now enshrined in the bank regulatory matrix via Basel II, 

were the binding constraint on risk taking, it acted perversely, allowing ever greater 

leverage as leveraged trading acted to reduce measured volatility! Remember, the 

convertible bond market at first looked placid as a lake as leverage grew—but then 

imploded in a way few thought possible. Is this a Black Swan event or a failure of 

the stated objectives of risk management and prudential oversight? 
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We all know that risk management systems based solely on analysis of past price 

moves will at some point fall if financial markets continue to change. The problem 

with current risk management systems cannot be fixed by fiddling with VaR or 

other statical models. Risk management regimes must incorporate judgments about 

the evolution of the underlying markets, distribution of possible price changes and 

other dynamic sources of risk. 

Indeed, as we discussed last week (‘‘Are You Ready for the Next Bank Stress 

Tests’’), this is precisely why IRA employs quarterly surveys of bank stress tests to 

benchmark the US banking industry. Think of the banking industry as a school of 

fish, moving in generally the same direction, but not uniformly or even consistently. 

There is enormous variation in the past of each member of the school, even though 

from a distance the group seems to move in unison. 

Stepping back from the narrow confines of finance for a moment, consider that 

the most dramatic changes in the world are arguably attributable to asymmetric 

confluences of energy changing the direction of human history. It’s happened over 

and over again. The danger has and always will be the immutable law of unintended consequences, which always comes back to bite the arrogant few who believe 

they can control the future outcome. And it is always the many of us who pay the 

price for these reckless leaps of faith. 

If the recent financial crises were truly highly infrequent random events, then any 

set of policies that can continuously prevent their reoccurrence seemingly will be 

very expensive in terms of idle capital and presumably less efficient markets required to avoid them. If, on the other hand, the crisis was the result of financial 

innovation and the ability to get leveraged cheaply, then society need not continuously bare all the costs associated with preventing market events like the bursting 

of asset bubbles. 

Policy-makers would like everyone to believe that the recent crises were random 

unpredictable Black Swan events. How can they be blamed for failing to anticipate 

a low probability, random, and unpredictable event? If on the other hand, the crises 

had observable antecedents, e.g., increased use of leverage, maturity mismatches, 

near zero default rates, and spikes in housing price to rental rates and housing 

price to income ratios, then one must ask: why policy-makers did not connect the 

dots, attach significant higher than normal probabilities to the occurrence of severe 

financial disturbances, and fashion policies accordingly? Ultimately, that is a question that Ben Bernanke and the rest of the federal financial regulatory community 

still have yet to answer. 

Questions? Comments? info@institutionalriskanalytics.com

BIOGRAPHY FOR CHRISTOPHER WHALEN

Christopher is co-founder of Institutional Risk Analytics, the Los Angeles based 

provider of risk management tools and consulting services for auditors, regulators 

and financial professionals. Christopher leads IRA’s risk advisory practice and 

consults for global companies on a variety of financial and regulatory issues. He is 

a Fellow of the Networks Financial Institute at Indiana State University. Christopher volunteers as a regional director of Professional Risk Managers International 

Association (www.prmia.org) and is a board adviser to I-OnAsia Limited 

(www.ionasia.com.hk), a global business security and risk consultancy based in 

Hong Kong. Christopher currently edits The Institutional Risk Analyst, a weekly 

news report and commentary on significant developments in and around the global 

financial markets. Christopher has testified before the Congress and the SEC on a 

variety of issues and contributes articles and commentaries to publications such as 

The International Economy, American Banker and The Big Picture.

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Dr. Colander. 

STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID COLANDER, CHRISTIAN A. JOHNSON DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, 

MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE 

Dr. COLANDER. Mr. Chairman, thanks for the opportunity to testify. I am Dave Colander, the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished 

Professor of Economics at Middlebury College. I was invited here 

because I was one of the authors of the Dahlem Report in which 
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we chided the economics profession for its failure to warn society 

about the impending financial crisis. 

Some non-economists have blamed the financial crisis on economists’ highly technical models. My argument is that the problem 

isn’t the models, the problem is the way the economic models are 

used, and I think a number of the other panelists have made that 

point. Where I am going to lead or go with that is that the issue 

goes much deeper than just with VaR and the various models you 

are looking at, and it goes very much to the general arguments 

about science and technology and the way in which economists approach problems, and I think, you know, Mr. Whalen had it directly right: we live in the world of supposition. Why? Because that 

is what our incentives are. We write articles. We advance through 

writing articles, we don’t advance by designing something positive. 

If we are working for a business, we do, but within academics it 

is very much directed towards, you know, sort of what can we publish, and so I think Value-at-Risk models are part of a much broader economic problem, you know, sort of in terms of what economists 

accept and how they go about doing what they are doing. 

An example I want to give is really about macroeconomics, you 

know, sort of in the dominant model in macroeconomics, which is 

the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model, which is 

a big model designed very much along the same lines about efficient markets. It sort of took efficient markets and said, what if we 

had efficient markets in the entire economy? To get that model, you 

have to assume there is one individual, because we can’t solve it 

unless there is only one individual. We have to assume that person 

is globally rational, understands everything and he has complete 

knowledge in looking into the infinite future, and then we can actually solve it for a very small case. 

By definition, this model rules out strategic coordination problems. What would happen if somebody else did something else? 

That is obviously the likely cause of the recent crisis, but it was 

simply assumed away in the macroeconomic model and that macroeconomic model has been dominant for the last 30 years and has 

been funded by NSF, the research, you need to be looking into that. 

If the DSGE model had been seen as an aid to common sense, 

it could have been a useful model. It improved some of the problems that some earlier models had. But for a variety of sociological 

reasons that I don’t have time to go into here, a majority of macroeconomists started believing the DSGE model was useful, not just 

as an aid to our understanding but as the model of the macroeconomy. As that DSGE model became dominant, really important 

research on the whole set of broader non-linear and complex dynamic models that would have really served some foundation for 

thinking about these issues just wasn’t done. It just wasn’t allowed. 

You couldn’t get anything published on it in the main macro journals. 

Similar developments occurred with the efficient market finance 

models, which made assumptions very similar to the DSGE model. 

And so, again, at first these served a useful purpose. They led to 

technological advances in risk management and financial markets. 

But as happened in macro, the users of these financial models forgot that the models provide, at best, half-truths. They stopped 
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using models with common sense and judgment. What that means 

is that warning labels should be put on models, and that should 

be in bold print, ‘these models are based on assumptions that do 

not fit the real world and thus these models should be not relied 

on very heavily.’ Those warning labels haven’t been there. 

How did something so stupid like this happen in economics? It 

didn’t happen because economists are stupid, and I appreciate the 

people before who said we are not. We are very bright. It happened 

because of incentives within the economics profession and those incentives lead researchers to dot i’s and cross t’s of existing models. 

It is a lot easier to do that than to design a whole new model that 

nobody else, a peer, can really review. So they don’t explore the 

wide range of alternative models, and they don’t focus their research on interpreting and seeing that models are used in policy 

in a common sense fashion. 

So let me conclude with just two brief suggestions which relate 

to issues under the jurisdiction of this committee that might decrease the probability of such events happening in the future, and 

these are far off but it has to do with, you know, sort of the incentives for economists. The first is a proposal that might add some 

common sense check on models. Such a check is needed because 

currently there is a nature of the internal to the sub-field peer review system, that works within NSF and within the system, that 

allows for what can only be called an incestuous mutual reinforcement of researchers’ views with no common sense filter on those 

views. My proposal is to include a wider range of peers in the reviewing process for the National Science Foundation grants in the 

social sciences. For example, physicists, mathematicians, statisticians and even business and government representatives could 

serve on reviewing those, and it would serve as a useful common 

sense check, you know, about what is going on. 

The second is a proposal to increase the number of researchers 

trained in interpreting models, rather than developing models, by 

providing research grants to do precisely that. In a sense, what I 

am suggesting is an applied science division of the National Science 

Foundation, a social science component. This division would fund 

work on the usefulness of models and would be responsible for adding the warning labels that should have been attached to those 

models. 

The applied research would not be highly technical and would involve a quite different set of skills than the standard scientific research requires. It would require researchers to have an intricate 

knowledge—consumer’s knowledge of the theory, but not a producer’s knowledge of that theory. In addition, it would require a 

knowledge of institutions, methodology, previous literature and a 

sensibility of how the system works. These are all skills that are 

not taught in graduate economics today, but they are skills that 

underlie judgment and common sense. By providing NSF grants for 

this work, the NSF would encourage the development of a group 

of economists who specialize in interpreting models and applying 

models to the real world. The development of such a group would 

go a long way toward placing the necessary warning labels on models. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Colander follows:]
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVID COLANDER

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: I thank you for the opportunity 

to testify. My name is David Colander. I am the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished 

Professor of Economics at Middlebury College. I have written or edited over forty 

books, including a top-selling principles of economics textbook, and 150 articles on 

various aspects of economics. I was invited to speak because I was one of the authors of the Dahlem Report in which we chided the economics profession for its failure to warn society about the impending financial crisis, and I have been asked to 

expand on some of the themes that we discussed in that report. (I attach that report 

as an appendix to this testimony.)

Introduction 

One year ago, almost to the day, the U.S. economy had a financial heart attack, 

from which it is still recovering. That heart attack, like all heart attacks, was a 

shock, and it has caused much discussion about who is to blame, and how can we 

avoid such heart attacks in the future. In my view much of that discussion has been 

off point. To make an analogy to a physical heart attack, the U.S. had a heart attack because it is the equivalent of a 450-pound man with serious ailments too numerous to list, who is trying to live as if he were still a 20-year-old who can party 

24–7. It doesn’t take a rocket economist to know that that will likely lead to trouble. 

The questions I address in my testimony are: Why didn’t rocket economists recognize that, and warn society about it? And: What changes can be made to see that 

it doesn’t happen in the future? 

Some non-economists have blamed the financial heart attack on economist’s highly technical models. In my view the problem is not the models; the problem is the 

way economic models are used. All too often models are used in lieu of educated 

common sense, when in fact models should be used as an aid to educated common 

sense. When models replace common sense, they are a hindrance rather than a help.

Modeling the Economy as a Complex System 

Using models within economics or within any other social science, is especially 

treacherous. That’s because social science involves a higher degree of complexity 

than the natural sciences. The reason why social science is so complex is that the 

basic unit in social science, which economists call agents, are strategic, whereas the 

basic unit of the natural sciences are not. Economics can be thought of the physics 

with strategic atoms, who keep trying to foil any efforts to understand them and 

bring them under control. Strategic agents complicate modeling enormously; they 

make it impossible to have a perfect model since they increase the number of calculations one would have to make in order to solve the model beyond the calculations the fastest computer one can hypothesize could process in a finite amount of 

time. 

Put simply, the formal study of complex systems is really, really, hard. Inevitably, 

complex systems exhibit path dependence, nested systems, multiple speed variables, 

sensitive dependence on initial conditions, and other non-linear dynamical properties. This means that at any moment in time, right when you thought you had 

a result, all hell can break loose. Formally studying complex systems requires rigorous training in the cutting edge of mathematics and statistics. It’s not for neophytes. 

This recognition that the economy is complex is not a new discovery. Earlier 

economists, such as John Stuart Mill, recognized the economy’s complexity and were 

very modest in their claims about the usefulness of their models. They carefully presented their models as aids to a broader informed common sense. They built this 

modesty into their policy advice and told policy-makers that the most we can expect 

from models is half-truths. To make sure that they did not claim too much for their 

scientific models, they divided the field of economics into two branches-one a scientific branch, which worked on formal models, and the other political economy, 

which was the branch of economics that addressed policy. Political economy was 

seen as an art which did not have the backing of science, but instead relied on the 

insights from models developed in the scientific branch supplemented by educated 

common sense to guide policy prescriptions. 

In the early 1900s that two-part division broke down, and economists became a 

bit less modest in their claims for models, and more aggressive in their application 

of models directly to policy questions. The two branches were merged, and the result 

was a tragedy for both the science of economics and for the applied policy branch 

of economics. 

It was a tragedy for the science of economics because it led economists away from 

developing a wide variety of models that would creatively explore the extraor-
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1Some approaches working outside this Walrasian general equilibrium framework that I see 

as promising includes approaches using adaptive network analysis, agent based modeling, random graph theory, ultrametrics, combinatorial stochastic processes, co-integrated vector auto-regression, and the general study of non-linear dynamic models. 2 Among well known economists, Robert Solow stands out in having warned about the use of 

DSGE models for policy. (See Solow, in Colander, 2007, pg. 235.) He called them ‘‘rhetorical 

swindles.’’ Other economists, such as Post Keynesians, and economic methodologists also warned 

about the use of these models. For a discussion of alternative approaches, see Colander, ed. 

(2007). So alternative approaches were being considered, and concern about the model was 

aired, but those voices were lost in the enthusiasm most of the macroeconomics community 

showed for these models. 

dinarily difficult questions that the complexity of the economy raised, questions for 

which new analytic and computational technology opened up new avenues of investigation.1 Instead, the economics profession spent much of its time dotting i’s and 

crossing t’s on what was called a Walrasian general equilibrium model which was 

more analytically tractable. As opposed to viewing the supply/demand model and its 

macroeconomic counterpart, the Walrasian general equilibrium model, as interesting 

models relevant for a few limited phenomena, but at best a stepping stone for a formal understanding of the economy, it enshrined both models, and acted as if it explained everything. Complexities were just assumed away not because it made sense 

to assume them away, but for tractability reasons. The result was a set of models 

that would not even pass a perfunctory common sense smell test being studied ad 

nauseam. Initially macroeconomics stayed separate from this broader unitary approach, and 

relied on a set of rough and ready models that had little scientific foundation. But 

in the 1980s, macroeconomics and finance fell into this ‘‘single model’’ approach. As 

that happened it caused economists to lose sight of the larger lesson that complexity 

conveys—that models in a complex system can be expected to continually break 

down. This adoption by macroeconomists of a single-model approach is one of the 

reasons why the economics profession failed to warn society about the financial crisis, and some parts of the profession assured society that such a crisis could not 

happen. Because they focused on that single model, economists simply did not study 

and plan for the inevitable breakdown of systems that one would expect in a complex system, because they had become so enamored with their model that they forgot to use it with common sense judgment.

Models and Macroeconomics 

Let me be a bit more specific. The dominant model in macroeconomics is the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. This is a model that assumes 

there is a single globally rational representative agent with complete knowledge 

who is maximizing over the infinite future. In this model, by definition, there can 

be no strategic coordination problem—the most likely cause of the recent crisis—

such problems are simply assumed away. Yet, this model has been the central focus 

of macro economists’ research for the last thirty years. 

Had the DSGE model been seen as an aid to common sense, it could have been 

a useful model. When early versions of this model first developed back in the early 

1980s, it served the useful purpose of getting some inter-temporal issues straight 

that earlier macroeconomic models had screwed up. But then, for a variety of sociological reasons that I don’t have time to go into here, a majority of macroeconomists 

started believing that the DSGE model was useful not just as an aid to our understanding, but as the model of the macroeconomy. That doesn’t say much for the common sense of rocket economists. As the DSGE model became dominant, important 

research on broader non-linear dynamic models of the economy that would have 

been more helpful in understanding how an economy would be likely to crash, and 

what government might do when faced with a crash, was not done.2

Similar developments occurred with efficient market finance models, which make 

similar assumptions to DSGE models. When efficient market models first developed, 

they were useful; they led to technological advances in risk management and financial markets. But, as happened with macro, the users of these financial models forgot that models provide at best half truths; they stopped using models with common 

sense and judgment. The modelers knew that there was uncertainty and risk in 

these markets that when far beyond the risk assumed in the models. Simplification 

is the nature of modeling. But simplification means the models cannot be used directly, but must be used judgment and common sense, with a knowledge of the limitations of use that the simplifications require. Unfortunately, the warning labels on 

the models that should have been there in bold print—these models are based 

on assumptions that do not fit the real world, and thus the models should 

not be relied on too heavily—were not there. They should have been, which is 
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why in the Dahlem Report we suggested that economic researchers who develop 

these models be subject to a code of ethics that requires them to warn society when 

economic models are being used for purposes for which they were not designed. 

How did something so stupid happen in economics? It did not happen because 

economists are stupid; they are very bright. It happened because of incentives in 

the academic profession to advance lead researchers to dot i’s and cross t’s of existing models, rather than to explore a wide range of alternative models, or to focus 

their research on interpreting and seeing that models are used in policy with common sense. Common sense does not advance one very far within the economics profession. The over-reliance on a single model used without judgment is a serious 

problem that is built into the institutional structure of academia that produces economic researchers. That system trains show dogs, when what we need are hunting 

dogs. 

The incorrect training starts in graduate school, where in their core courses students are primarily trained in analytic techniques useful for developing models, but 

not in how to use models creatively, or in how to use models with judgment to arrive 

at policy conclusions. For the most part policy issues are not even discussed in the 

entire core macroeconomics course. As students at a top graduate school said, ‘‘Monetary and fiscal policy are not abstract enough to be a question that would be answered in a macro course’’ and ‘‘We never talked about monetary or fiscal policy, 

although it might have been slipped in as a variable in one particular model.’’ (Colander, 2007, pg. 169).

Suggestions 

Let me conclude with a brief discussion of two suggestions, which relate to issues 

under the jurisdiction of this committee, that might decrease the probability of such 

events happening in the future.

Include a wider range of peers in peer review 

The first is a proposal that might help add a common sense check on models. Such 

a check is needed because, currently, the nature of internal-to-the-subfield peer review allows for an almost incestuous mutual reinforcement of researcher’s views 

with no common sense filter on those views. The proposal is to include a wider 

range of peers in the reviewing process of NSF grants in the social sciences. For 

example, physicists, mathematician, statisticians, and even business and governmental representatives, could serve, along with economists, on reviewing committees 

for economics proposals. Such a broader peer review process would likely both encourage research on much wider range of models and would also encourage more 

creative work.

Increase the number of researchers trained to interpret models 

The second is a proposal to increase the number of researchers trained in interpreting models rather than developing models by providing research grants to do 

that. In a sense, what I am suggesting is an applied science division of the National 

Science Foundation’s social science component. This division would fund work on the 

usefulness of models, and would be responsible for adding the warning labels that 

should have been attached to the models. 

This applied research would not be highly technical and would involve a quite different set of skills than the standard scientific research would require. It would require researchers who had an intricate consumer’s knowledge of theory but not a 

producer’s knowledge. In addition it would require a knowledge of institutions, 

methodology, previous literature, and a sensibility about how the system works. 

These are all skills that are currently not taught in graduate economics programs, 

but they are the skills that underlie judgment and common sense. By providing NSF 

grants for this work, the NSF would encourage the development of a group of economists who specialized in interpreting models and applying models to the real world. 

The development of such a group would go a long way toward placing the necessary 

warning labels on models, and make it less likely that fiascoes like a financial crisis 

would happen again.

Bibliography

Colander, David. 2006. (ed.) Post Walrasian Macroeconomics: Beyond the Dynamic 

Stochastic General Equilibrium Model. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University 

Press.

Colander, David. 2007. The Making of an Economist Redux. Princeton, New Jersey, 

Princeton University Press.
130

Solow, Robert. 2007. ‘‘Reflections on the Survey’’ in Colander (2007).
131

Appendix

1. Introduction 

The global financial crisis has revealed the need to rethink fundamentally how 

financial systems are regulated. It has also made clear a systemic failure of the economics profession. Over the past three decades, economists have largely developed 

and come to rely on models that disregard key factors—including heterogeneity of 

decision rules, revisions of forecasting strategies, and changes in the social context—

that drive outcomes in asset and other markets. It is obvious, even to the casual 

observer that these models fail to account for the actual evolution of the real-world 

economy. Moreover, the current academic agenda has largely crowded out research 

on the inherent causes of financial crises. There has also been little exploration of 

early indicators of system crisis and potential ways to prevent this malady from developing. In fact, if one browses through the academic macroeconomics and finance 

literature, ‘‘systemic crisis’’ appears like an otherworldly event that is absent from 

economic models. Most models, by design, offer no immediate handle on how to 
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3 Reinhart and Rogoff (2008) argue that the current financial crisis differs little from a long 

chain of similar crises in developed and developing countries. We certainly share their view. The 

problem is that the received body of models in macro finance to which the above authors have 

prominently contributed provides no room whatsoever for such recurrent boom and bust cycles. 

The literature has, therefore, been a major source of the illusory ‘this time it is different’ view 

that the authors themselves criticize. 4 Indeed, few researchers explored the consequences of a breakdown of their assumptions, 

even though this was rather likely. 

think about or deal with this recurring phenomenon.3 In our hour of greatest need, 

societies around the world are left to grope in the dark without a theory. That, to 

us, is a systemic failure of the economics profession.

The implicit view behind standard equilibrium models is that markets and economies are inherently stable and that they only temporarily get off track. The majority 

of economists thus failed to warn policy-makers about the threatening system crisis 

and ignored the work of those who did. Ironically, as the crisis has unfolded, economists have had no choice but to abandon their standard models and to produce 

hand-waving common sense remedies. Common sense advice, although useful, is a 

poor substitute for an underlying model that can provide much-needed guidance for 

developing policy and regulation. It is not enough to put the existing model to one 

side, observing that one needs, ‘‘exceptional measures for exceptional times.’’ What 

we need are models capable of envisaging such ‘‘exceptional times.’’

The confinement of macroeconomics to models of stable states that are perturbed 

by limited external shocks and that neglect the intrinsic recurrent boom-and-bust 

dynamics of our economic system is remarkable. After all, worldwide financial and 

economic crises are hardly new and they have had a tremendous impact beyond the 

immediate economic consequences of mass unemployment and hyper inflation. This 

is even more surprising, given the long academic legacy of earlier economists’ study 

of crisis phenomena, which can be found in the work of Walter Bagehot (1873), Axel 

Leijonhuvfud (2000), Charles Kindleberger (1989), and Hyman Minsky (1986), to 

name a few prominent examples. This tradition, however, has been neglected and 

even suppressed. 

The most recent literature provides us with examples of blindness against the upcoming storm that seem odd in retrospect. For example, in their analysis of the risk 

management implications of CDOs, Krahnen (2005) and Krahnen and Wilde (2006) 

mention the possibility of an increase of ‘systemic risk.’ But, they conclude that this 

aspect should not be the concern of the banks engaged in the CDO market, because 

it is the governments’ responsibility to provide costless insurance against a systemwide crash. We do not share this view. On the more theoretical side, a recent and 

prominent strand of literature essentially argues that consumers and investors are 

too risk averse because of their memory of the (improbable) event of the Great Depression (e.g., Cogley and Sargent, 2008). Much of the motivation for economics as 

an academic discipline stems from the desire to explain phenomena like unemployment, boom and bust cycles, and financial crises, but dominant theoretical models 

exclude many of the aspects of the economy that will likely lead to a crisis. Confining theoretical models to ‘normal’ times without consideration of such defects 

might seem contradictory to the focus that the average taxpayer would expect of the 

scientists on his payroll. 

This failure has deep methodological roots. The often heard definition of economics—that it is concerned with the ‘allocation of scarce resources’—is short-sighted 

and misleading. It reduces economics to the study of optimal decisions in well-specified choice problems. Such research generally loses track of the inherent dynamics 

of economic systems and the instability that accompanies its complex dynamics. 

Without an adequate understanding of these processes, one is likely to miss the 

major factors that influence the economic sphere of our societies. This insufficient 

definition of economics often leads researchers to disregard questions about the coordination of actors and the possibility of coordination failures. Indeed, analysis of 

these issues would require a different type of mathematics than that which is generally used now by many prominent economic models. 

Many of the financial economists who developed the theoretical models upon 

which the modern financial structure is built were well aware of the strong and 

highly unrealistic restrictions imposed on their models to assure stability. Yet, financial economists gave little warning to the public about the fragility of their models,4 even as they saw individuals and businesses build a financial system based on 

their work. There are a number of possible explanations for this failure to warn the 

public. One is a ‘‘lack of understanding’’ explanation—the researchers did not know 

the models were fragile. We find this explanation highly unlikely; financial engineers are extremely bright, and it is almost inconceivable that such bright individ-
133

uals did not understand the limitations of the models. A second, more likely explanation, is that they did not consider it their job to warn the public. If that is the 

cause of their failure, we believe that it involves a misunderstanding of the role of 

the economist, and involves an ethical breakdown. In our view, economists, as with 

all scientists, have an ethical responsibility to communicate the limitations of their 

models and the potential misuses of their research. Currently, there is no ethical 

code for professional economic scientists. There should be one. 

In the following pages, we identify some major areas of concern in theory and applied methodology and point out their connection to crisis phenomena. We also highlight some promising avenues of study that may provide guidance for future researchers.

2. Models (or the Use of Models) as a Source of Risk 

The economic textbook models applied for allocation of scarce resources are predominantly of the Robinson Crusoe (representative agent) type. Financial market 

models are obtained by letting Robinson manage his financial affairs as a sideline 

to his well-considered utility maximization over his (finite or infinite) expected lifespan taking into account with correct probabilities all potential future happenings. 

This approach is mingled with insights from Walrasian general equilibrium theory, 

in particular the finding of the Arrrow-Debreu two-period model that all uncertainty 

can be eliminated if only there are enough contingent claims (i.e., appropriate derivative instruments). This theoretical result (a theorem in an extremely stylized 

model) underlies the common belief that the introduction of new classes of derivatives can only be welfare increasing (a view obviously originally shared by former 

Fed Chairman Greenspan). It is worth emphasizing that this view is not an empirically grounded belief but an opinion derived from a benchmark model that is much 

too abstract to be confronted with data. 

On the practical side, mathematical portfolio and risk management models have 

been the academic backbone of the tremendous increase of trading volume and diversification of instruments in financial markets. Typically, new derivative products 

achieve market penetration only if a certain industry standard has been established 

for pricing and risk management of these products. Mostly, pricing principles are 

derived from a set of assumptions on an ‘appropriate’ process for the underlying 

asset, (i.e., the primary assets on which options or forwards are written) together 

with an equilibrium criterion such as arbitrage-free prices. With that mostly comes 

advice for hedging the inherent risk of a derivative position by balancing it with 

other assets that neutralize the risk exposure. The most prominent example is certainly the development of a theory of option pricing by Black and Scholes that eventually (in the eighties) could even be implemented on pocket calculators. Simultaneously with Black-Scholes option pricing, the same principles led to the widespread 

introduction of new strategies under the heading of portfolio insurance and dynamic 

hedging that just tried to implement a theoretically risk-free portfolio composed of 

both assets and options and keep it risk-free by frequent rebalancing after changes 

of its input data (e.g., asset prices). For structured products for credit risk, the basic 

paradigm of derivative pricing—perfect replication—is not applicable so that one 

has to rely on a kind of rough-and-ready evaluation of these contracts on the base 

of historical data. Unfortunately, historical data were hardly available in most cases 

which meant that one had to rely on simulations with relatively arbitrary assumptions on correlations between risks and default probabilities. This makes the theoretical foundations of all these products highly questionable—the equivalent to 

building a building of cement of which you weren’t sure of the components. The dramatic recent rise of the markets for structured products (most prominently 

collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps—CDOs and CDSs) was 

made possible by development of such simulation-based pricing tools and the adoption of an industry-standard for these under the lead of rating agencies. Barry 

Eichengreen (2008) rightly points out that the ‘‘development of mathematical methods designed to quantify and hedge risk encouraged commercial banks, investment 

banks and hedge funds to use more leverage’’ as if the very use of the mathematical 

methods diminished the underlying risk. He also notes that the models were estimated on data from periods of low volatility and thus could not deal with the arrival 

of major changes. Worse, it is our contention that such major changes are endemic 

to the economy and cannot be simply ignored. 

What are the flaws of the new unregulated financial markets which have 

emerged? As we have already pointed out in the introduction, the possibility of systemic risk has not been entirely ignored but it has been defined as lying outside 

the responsibility of market participants. In this way, moral hazard concerning systemic risk has been a necessary and built-in attribute of the system. The neglect 

of the systemic part in the ‘normal mode of operation,’ of course, implies that exter-
134

nal effects are not taken properly into account and that in tendency, market participants will ignore the influence of their own behavior on the stability of the system. 

The interesting aspect is more that this was a known and accepted element of operations. Note that the blame should not only fall on market participants, but also 

on the deliberate ignoring of the systemic risk factors or the failure to at least point 

them out to the public amounts to a sort of academic ‘moral hazard.’

There are some additional aspects as well: asset-pricing and risk management 

tools are developed from an individualistic perspective, taking as given (ceteris 

paribus) the behavior of all other market participants. However, popular models 

might be used by a large number or even the majority of market participants. Similarly, a market participant (e.g., the notorious Long-Term Capital Management) 

might become so dominant in certain markets that the ceteris paribus assumption 

becomes unrealistic. The simultaneous pursuit of identical micro strategies leads to 

synchronous behavior and mechanic contagion. This simultaneous application might 

generate an unexpected macro outcome that actually jeopardizes the success of the 

underlying micro strategies. A perfect illustration is the U.S. stock market crash of 

October 1987. Triggered by a small decrease of prices, automated hedging strategies 

produced an avalanche of sell orders that out of the blue led to a fall in U.S. stock 

indices of about 20 percent within one day. With the massive sales to rebalance 

their portfolios (along the lines of Black and Scholes), the relevant actors could not 

realize their attempted incremental adjustments, but rather suffered major losses 

from the ensuing large macro effect. 

A somewhat different aspect is the danger of a control illusion: The mathematical 

rigor and numerical precision of risk management and asset pricing tools has a 

tendency to conceal the weaknesses of models and assumptions to those who have 

not developed them and do not know the potential weakness of the assumptions and 

it is indeed this that Eichengreen emphasizes. Naturally, models are only approximations to the real world dynamics and partially built upon quite heroic assumptions (most notoriously: Normality of asset price changes which can be rejected at 

a confidence level of 99.9999 . . .. Anyone who has attended a course in first-year 

statistics can do this within minutes). Of course, considerable progress has been 

made by moving to more refined models with, e.g., ‘fat-tailed’ Levy processes as 

their driving factors. However, while such models better capture the intrinsic volatility of markets, their improved performance, taken at face value, might again contribute to enhancing the control illusion of the naı ̈ve user. The increased sophistication of extant models does, however, not overcome the 

robustness problem and should not absolve the modelers from explaining their limitations to the users in the financial industry. As in nuclear physics, the tools provided by financial engineering can be put to very different uses so that what is designed as an instrument to hedge risk can become a weapon of ‘financial mass destruction’ (in the words of Warren Buffet) if used for increased leverage. In fact, it 

appears that derivative positions have been built up often in speculative ways to 

profit from high returns as long as the downside risk does not materialize. Researchers who develop such models can claim they are neutral academics—developing tools that people are free to use or not. We do not find that view credible. 

Researchers have an ethical responsibility to point out to the public when the tool 

that they developed is misused. It is the responsibility of the researcher to make 

clear from the outset the limitations and underlying assumptions of his models and 

warn of the dangers of their mechanic application. 

What follows from our diagnosis? Market participants and regulators have to become more sensitive towards the potential weaknesses of risk management models. 

Since we do not know the ‘true’ model, robustness should be a key concern. Model 

uncertainty should be taken into account by applying more than a single model. For 

example, one could rely on probabilistic projections that cover a whole range of specific models (cf., Fo ̈llmer, 2008). The theory of robust control provides a toolbox of 

techniques that could be applied for this purpose, and it is an approach that should 

be considered.

3. Unrealistic Model Assumptions and Unrealistic Outcomes 

Many economic models are built upon the twin assumptions of ‘rational expectations’ and a representative agent. ‘‘Rational expectations’’ instructs an economist to 

specify individuals’ expectations to be fully consistent with the structure of his own 

model. This concept can be thought of as merely a way to close a model. A behavioral interpretation of rational expectations would imply that individuals and the 

economist have a complete understanding of the economic mechanisms governing 

the world. In this sense, rational expectations models do not attempt to formalize 

individuals’ actual expectations: specifications are not based on empirical observation of the expectations formation process of human actors. Thus, even when applied 
135

5For a critique of rational expectations models on epistemological grounds, see Frydman and 

Goldberg (2007, 2008) and references therein. 6The historical emergence of the representative agent paradigm is a mystery. Ironically, it 

appeared over the 70s after a period of intense discussions on the problem of aggregation in 

economics (that basically yielded negative results such as the impossibility to demonstrated 

‘nice’ properties of aggregate demand or supply functions without imposing extreme assumptions 

on individual behavior). The representative agent appeared without methodological discussion. 

In the words of Deirdre McCloskey: ‘‘It became a rule in the conversation of some economists 

because Tom and Bob said so.’’ (personal communication). Today, this convention has become 

so strong that many young economists wouldn’t know of an alternative way to approach macroeconomic issues. 

economics research or psychology provide insights about how individuals actually 

form expectations, they cannot be used within RE models. Leaving no place for imperfect knowledge and adaptive adjustments, rational expectations models are typically found to have dynamics that are not smooth enough to fit economic data well.5

Technically, rational expectations models are often framed as dynamic programming problems in macroeconomics. But, dynamic programming models have serious 

limitations. Specifically, to make them analytically tractable, not more than one dynamically maximizing agent can be considered, and consistent expectations have to 

be imposed. Therefore, dynamic programming models are hardly imaginable without 

the assumptions of a representative agent and rational expectations. This has generated a vicious cycle by which the technical tools developed on the base of the chosen assumptions prevent economists from moving beyond these restricted settings 

and exploring more realistic scenarios. Note that such settings also presume that 

there is a single model of the economy, which is odd given that even economists are 

divided in their views about the correct model of the economy. While other currents 

of research do exist, economic policy advice, particularly in financial economics, has 

far too often been based (consciously or not) on a set of axioms and hypotheses derived ultimately from a highly limited dynamic control model, using the Robinson 

approach with ‘rational’ expectations. 

The major problem is that despite its many refinements, this is not at all an approach based on, and confirmed by, empirical research.6 In fact, it stands in stark 

contrast to a broad set of regularities in human behavior discovered both in psychology and what is called behavioral and experimental economics. The corner 

stones of many models in finance and macroeconomics are rather maintained despite 

all the contradictory evidence discovered in empirical research. Much of this literature shows that human subjects act in a way that bears no resemblance to the 

rational expectations paradigm and also have problems discovering ‘rational expectations equilibria’ in repeated experimental settings. Rather, agents display various 

forms of ‘bounded rationality’ using heuristic decision rules and displaying inertia 

in their reaction to new information. They have also been shown in financial markets to be strongly influenced by emotional and hormonal reactions (see Lo et al., 

2005, and Coates and Herbert, 2008). Economic modeling has to take such findings 

seriously. 

What we are arguing is that as a modeling requirement, internal consistency 

must be complemented with external consistency: Economic modeling has to be compatible with insights from other branches of science on human behavior. It is highly 

problematic to insist on a specific view of humans in economic settings that is irreconcilable with evidence. 

The ‘representative agent’ aspect of many current models in macroeconomics (including macro finance) means that modelers subscribe to the most extreme form of 

conceptual reductionism (Lux and Westerhoff, 2009): by assumption, all concepts applicable to the macro sphere (i.e., the economy or its financial system) are fully reduced to concepts and knowledge for the lower-level domain of the individual agent. 

It is worth emphasizing that this is quite different from the standard reductionist 

concept that has become widely accepted in natural sciences. The more standard notion of reductionism amounts to an approach to understanding the nature of complex phenomena by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, allowing for 

new, emergent phenomena at the higher hierarchical level (the concept of ‘more is 

different,’ cf. Anderson, 1972). 

Quite to the contrary, the representative agent approach in economics has simply 

set the macro sphere equal to the micro sphere in all respects. One could, indeed, 

say that this concept negates the existence of a macro sphere and the necessity of 

investigating macroeconomic phenomena in that it views the entire economy as an 
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7The conceptual reductionist approach of the representative agent is also remarkably different 

from the narrative of the ‘invisible hand’ which has more the flavor of ‘more is different’. 

organism governed by a universal will.7 Any notion of ‘‘systemic risk’’ or ‘‘coordination failure’’ is necessarily absent from, and alien to, such a methodology. 

For natural scientists, the distinction between micro-level phenomena and those 

originating on a macro, system-wide scale from the interaction of microscopic units 

is well-known. In a dispersed system, the current crisis would be seen as an involuntary emergent phenomenon of the microeconomic activity. The conceptual reductionist paradigm, however, blocks from the outset any understanding of the interplay between the micro and macro levels. The differences between the overall system and its parts remain simply incomprehensible from the viewpoint of this approach. 

In order to develop models that allow us to deduce macro events from microeconomic regularities, economists have to rethink the concept of micro foundations 

of macroeconomic models. Since economic activity is of an essentially interactive nature, economists’ micro foundations should allow for the interactions of economic 

agents. Since interaction depends on differences in information, motives, knowledge 

and capabilities, this implies heterogeneity of agents. For instance, only a sufficiently rich structure of connections between firms, households and a dispersed 

banking sector will allow us to get a grasp on ‘‘systemic risk,’’ domino effects in the 

financial sector, and their repercussions on consumption and investment. The dominance of the extreme form of conceptual reductionism of the representative agent 

has prevented economists from even attempting to model such all important phenomena. It is the flawed methodology that is the ultimate reason for the lack of applicability of the standard macro framework to current events. 

Since most of what is relevant and interesting in economic life has to do with the 

interaction and coordination of ensembles of heterogeneous economic actors, the 

methodological preference for single actor models has extremely handicapped macroeconomic analysis and prevented it from approaching vital topics. For example, the 

recent surge of research in network theory has received relatively scarce attention 

in economics. Given the established curriculum of economic programs, an economist 

would find it much more tractable to study adultery as a dynamic optimization 

problem of a representative husband, and derive the optimal time path of marital 

infidelity (and publish his exercise) rather than investigating financial flows in the 

banking sector within a network theory framework. This is more than unfortunate 

in view of the network aspects of interbank linkages that have become apparent 

during the current crisis. 

In our view, a change of focus is necessary that takes seriously the regularities 

in expectation formation revealed by behavioral research and, in fact, gives back an 

independent role to expectations in economic models. It would also be fallacious to 

only replace the current paradigm by a representative ‘non-rational’ actor (as it is 

sometimes done in recent literature). Rather, an appropriate micro foundation is 

needed that considers interaction at a certain level of complexity and extracts macro 

regularities (where they exist) from microeconomic models with dispersed activity. 

Once one acknowledges the importance of empirically based behavioral micro 

foundations and the heterogeneity of actors, a rich spectrum of new models becomes 

available. The dynamic co-evolution of expectations and economic activity would 

allow one to study out-of-equilibrium dynamics and adaptive adjustments. Such dynamics could reveal the possibility of multiplicity and evolution of equilibria (e.g., 

with high or low employment) depending on agents’ expectations or even on the 

propagation of positive or negative ‘moods’ among the population. This would capture the psychological component of the business cycle which—though prominent in 

many policy-oriented discussions—is never taken into consideration in contemporary 

macroeconomic models. 

It is worth noting that understanding the formation of such low-level equilibria 

might be much more valuable in coping with major ‘efficiency losses’ by mass unemployment than the pursuit of small ‘inefficiencies’ due to societal decisions on norms 

such as shop opening times. Models with interacting heterogeneous agents would 

also open the door to the incorporation of results from other fields: network theory 

has been mentioned as an obvious example (for models of networks in finance see 

Allen and Babus, 2008). ‘Self-organized criticality’ theory is another area that seems 

to have some appeal for explaining boom-and-bust cycles (cf. Scheinkman and 

Woodford, 1992). Incorporating heterogeneous agents with imperfect knowledge 

would also provide a better framework for the analysis of the use and dissemination 

of information through market operations and more direct links of communication. 

If one accepts that the dispersed economic activity of many economic agents could 

be described by statistical laws, one might even take stock of methods from statis-
137

8 It is pretty obvious how the currently popular class of dynamic general equilibrium models 

would have to ‘cope’ with the current financial crisis. It will be covered either by a dummy or 

it will have to be interpreted as a very large negative stochastic shock to the economy, i.e., as 

an event equivalent to a large asteroid strike. 

tical physics to model dynamic economic systems (cf. Aoki and Yoshikawa, 2007; 

Lux, 2009, for examples).

4. Robustness and Data-Driven Empirical Research 

Currently popular models (in particular: dynamic general equilibrium models) do 

not only have weak micro foundations, their empirical performance is far from satisfactory (Juselius and Franchi, 2007). Indeed, the relevant strand of empirical economics has more and more avoided testing their models and has instead turned to 

calibration without explicit consideration of goodness-of-fit.8 This calibration is done 

using ‘‘deep economic parameters’’ such as parameters of utility functions derived 

from microeconomic studies. However, at the risk of being repetitive, it should be 

emphasized that micro parameters cannot be used directly in the parameterization 

of a macroeconomic model. The aggregation literature is full of examples that point 

out the possible ‘‘fallacies of composition.’’ The ‘‘deep parameters’’ only seem sensible 

if one considers the economy as a universal organism without interactions. If interactions are important (as it seems to us they are), the restriction of the parameter 

space imposed by using micro parameters is inappropriate. 

Another concern is nonstationarity and structural shifts in the underlying data. 

Macro models, unlike many financial models, are often calibrated over long time horizons which include major changes in the regulatory framework of the countries investigated. Cases in question are the movements between different exchange rate 

regimes and the deregulation of financial markets over the 70s and 80s. In summary, it seems to us that much of contemporary empirical work in macroeconomics 

and finance is driven by the pre-analytic belief in the validity of a certain model. 

Rather than (mis)using statistics as a means to illustrate these beliefs, the goal 

should be to put theoretical models to scientific test (as the naı ̈ve believer in positive 

science would expect). 

The current approach of using pre-selected models is problematic and we recommend a more data-driven methodology. Instead of starting out with an ad-hoc 

specification and questionable ceteris paribus assumptions, the key features of the 

data should be explored via data-analytical tools and specification tests. David 

Hendry provides a well-established empirical methodology for such exploratory data 

analysis (Hendry, 1995, 2009) as well as a general theory for model selection 

(Hendry and Krolzig, 2005); clustering techniques such as projection pursuit (e.g., 

Friedman, 1987) might provide alternatives for the identification of key relationships and the reduction of complexity on the way from empirical measurement to 

theoretical models. Co-integrated VAR models could provide an avenue towards 

identification of robust structures within a set of data (Juselius, 2006), for example, 

the forces that move equilibria (pushing forces, which give rise to stochastic trends) 

and forces that correct deviations from equilibrium (pulling forces, which give rise 

to long-run relations). Interpreted in this way, the ‘general-to-specific’ empirical approach has a good chance of nesting a multi-variate, path-dependent data-generating process and relevant dynamic macroeconomic theories. Unlike approaches in 

which data are silenced by prior restrictions, the Co-integrated VAR model gives the 

data a rich context in which to speak freely (Hoover et al., 2008). 

A chain of specification tests and estimated statistical models for simultaneous 

systems would provide a benchmark for the subsequent development of tests of models based on economic behavior: significant and robust relations within a simultaneous system would provide empirical regularities that one would attempt to explain, while the quality of fit of the statistical benchmark would offer a confidence 

band for more ambitious models. Models that do not reproduce (even) approximately 

the quality of the fit of statistical models would have to be rejected (the majority 

of currently popular macroeconomic and macro finance models would not pass this 

test). Again, we see here an aspect of ethical responsibility of researchers: Economic 

policy models should be theoretically and empirically sound. Economists should 

avoid giving policy recommendations on the base of models with a weak empirical 

grounding and should, to the extent possible, make clear to the public how strong 

the support of the data is for their models and the conclusions drawn from them.

5. A Research Agenda to Cope with Financial Fragility 

The notion of financial fragility implies that a given system might be more or less 

susceptible to produce crises. It seems clear that financial innovations have made 
138

the system more fragile. Apparently, the existing linkages within the worldwide, 

highly connected financial markets have generated the spill-overs from the U.S. subprime problem to other layers of the financial system. Many financial innovations 

had the effect of creating links between formerly unconnected players. All in all, the 

degree of connectivity of the system has probably increased enormously over the last 

decades. As is well known from network theory in natural sciences, a more highly 

connected system might be more efficient in coping with certain tasks (maybe distributing risk components), but will often also be more vulnerable to shocks and—

systemic failure! The systematic analysis of network vulnerability has been undertaken in the computer science and operations research literature (see e.g., Criado 

et al., 2005). Such aspects have, however, been largely absent from discussions in 

financial economics. The introduction of new derivatives was rather seen through 

the lens of general equilibrium models: more contingent claims help to achieve higher efficiency. Unfortunately, the claimed efficiency gains through derivatives are 

merely a theoretical implication of a highly stylized model and, therefore, have to 

count as a hypothesis. Since there is hardly any supporting empirical evidence (or 

even analysis of this question), the claimed real-world efficiency gains from derivatives are not justified by true science. While the economic argument in favor of ever 

new derivatives is more one of persuasion rather than evidence, important negative 

effects have been neglected. The idea that the system was made less risky with the 

development of more derivatives led to financial actors taking positions with extreme degrees of leverage and the danger of this has not been emphasized enough. 

As we have mentioned, one neglected area is the degree of connectivity and its 

interplay with the stability of the system (see Boesch et al., 2006). We believe that 

it will be necessary for supervisory authorities to develop a perspective on the network aspects of the financial system, collect appropriate data, define measures of 

connectivity and perform macro stress testing at the system level. In this way, new 

measures of financial fragility would be obtained. This would also require a new 

area of accompanying academic research that looks at agent-based models of the financial system, performs scenario analyses and develops aggregate risk measures. 

Network theory and the theory of self-organized criticality of highly connected systems would be appropriate starting points. 

The danger of systemic risk means that regulation has to be extended from individualistic (regulation of single institutions which of course, is still crucial) to system wide regulation. In the sort of system which is prone to systemic crisis, regulation also has to have a systemic perspective. Academic researchers and supervisory 

authorities thus have to look into connections within the financial sector and to investigate the repercussions of problems within one institute on other parts of the 

system (even across national borders). Certainly, before deciding about the bail-out 

of a large bank, this implies an understanding of the network. One should know 

whether its bankruptcy would lead to widespread domino effects or whether contagion would be limited. It seems to us that what regulators provide currently is 

far from a reliable assessment of such after effects. 

Such analysis has to be supported by more traditional approaches: Leverage of financial institutions rose to unprecedented levels prior to the crisis, partly by evading Basle II regulations through special investment vehicles (SIVs). The hedge fund 

market is still entirely unregulated. The interplay between leverage, connectivity 

and system risk needs to be investigated at the aggregate level. It is highly likely, 

that extreme leverage levels of interconnected institutions will be found to impose 

unacceptable social risk on the public. Prudent capital requirements would be necessary and would require a solid scientific investigation of the above aspects rather 

than a pre-analytic laissez-faire attitude. 

We also have to re-investigate the informational role of financial prices and financial contracts. While trading in stock markets is usually interpreted as at least in 

part transmitting information, this information transmission seems to have broken 

down in the case of structured financial products. It seems that securitization has 

rather led to a loss of information by anonymous intermediation (often multiple) between borrowers and lenders. In this way, the informational component has been 

outsourced to rating agencies and typically, the buyer of CDO tranches would not 

have spent any effort himself on information acquisition concerning his far away 

counterparts. However, this centralized information processing instead of the dispersed one in traditional credit relationships might lead to a severe loss of information. As it turned out, standard loan default models failed dramatically in recent 

years (Rajan et al., 2008). It should also be noted that the price system itself can 

exacerbate the difficulties in the financial market (see Hellwig, 2008). One of the 

reasons for the sharp fall in the asset valuations of major banks was not only the 

loss on the assets on which their derivatives were based, but also the general reaction of the markets to these assets. As markets became aware of the risk involved, 
139

all such assets were written down and it was in this way that a small sector of the 

market ‘‘contaminated’’ the rest. Large parts of the asset holdings of major banks 

abruptly lost much of their value. Thus the price system itself can be destabilizing 

as expectations change. 

On the macroeconomic level, it would be desirable to develop early warning 

schemes that indicate the formation of bubbles. Combinations of indicators with 

time series techniques could be helpful in detecting deviations of financial or other 

prices from their long-run averages. Indication of structural change (particularly towards non-stationary trajectories) would be a signature of changes of the behavior 

of market participants of a bubble-type nature.

6. Conclusions 

The current crisis might be characterized as an example of the final stage of a 

well-known boom-and-bust pattern that has been repeated so many times in the 

course of economic history. There are, nevertheless, some aspects that make this crisis different from its predecessors: First, the preceding boom had its origin—at least 

to a large part—in the development of new financial products that opened up new 

investment possibilities (while most previous crises were the consequence of overinvestment in new physical investment possibilities). Second, the global dimension 

of the current crisis is due to the increased connectivity of our already highly interconnected financial system. Both aspects have been largely ignored by academic economics. Research on the origin of instabilities, over-investment and subsequent 

slumps has been considered as an exotic side track from the academic research 

agenda (and the curriculum of most economics programs).This, of course, was because it was incompatible with the premise of the rational representative agent. 

This paradigm also made economics blind with respect to the role of interactions 

and connections between actors (such as the changes in the network structure of 

the financial industry brought about by deregulation and introduction of new structured products). Indeed, much of the work on contagion and herding behavior (see 

Banerjee, 1992, and Chamley, 2002) which is closely connected to the network structure of the economy has not been incorporated into macroeconomic analysis. 

We believe that economics has been trapped in a sub-optimal equilibrium in 

which much of its research efforts are not directed towards the most prevalent 

needs of society. Paradoxically self-reinforcing feedback effects within the profession 

may have led to the dominance of a paradigm that has no solid methodological basis 

and whose empirical performance is, to say the least, modest. Defining away the 

most prevalent economic problems of modern economies and failing to communicate 

the limitations and assumptions of its popular models, the economics profession 

bears some responsibility for the current crisis. It has failed in its duty to society 

to provide as much insight as possible into the workings of the economy and in providing warnings about the tools it created. It has also been reluctant to emphasize 

the limitations of its analysis. We believe that the failure to even envisage the current problems of the worldwide financial system and the inability of standard macro 

and finance models to provide any insight into ongoing events make a strong case 

for a major reorientation in these areas and a reconsideration of their basic premises.

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BIOGRAPHY FOR DAVID COLANDER

David Colander has been the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont since 1982. He has authored, 

co-authored, or edited over 40 books (including a principles and intermediate macro 

text) and 150 articles on a wide range of topics. His books have been, or are being, 

translated into a number of different languages, including Chinese, Bulgarian, Polish, Italian, and Spanish. 

He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and has taught at Columbia University, Vassar College, the University of Miami as well as Middlebury. He has also 

been a consultant to Time-Life Films, a consultant to Congress, a Brookings Policy 

Fellow, and a Visiting Scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford. In 2001–2002 he was the 

Kelly Professor of Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University. 

He is a former President of both the Eastern Economic Association and History 

of Economic Thought Society and is, or has been, on the editorial boards of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Journal of Economic Methodology, Eastern 

Economic Journal, and The Journal of Socioeconomics, and Journal of Economic 

Perspectives. He is a member of the AEA Committee on Economic Education.

DISCUSSION

Chairman MILLER. I want to thank all of you. 

APPROPRIATE USES OF FINANCIAL MODELS

Let me begin this panel with a question of the earlier panel. 

Some of those responsible, involved in developing economic modeling now say that the fundamental problem was that the model 

was wrong, there is more data. I don’t think anyone thinks that 

models should be prohibited or people should be prohibited from 

acting on their models for their investment decisions or whatever. 

The extent to which it can be used, it should be used for regulation, 

safety and soundness regulation. Do any of you—what do each of 

you think about whether the models may be improved and will become reliable, sufficiently reliable to base capital requirements 

on—or do you think that it is so inherently unpredictable that economic forecasts will never become like predicting the movements of 

the planets, that it may be useful for seeing if a financial institution is headed towards trouble, but not to say it is got nothing to 

worry about? Any of you. Dr. Berman. 

Dr. BERMAN. Thank you. I think models definitely have a very 

significant role, not just in finance but in society in general. The 

question is, what aspect of a model are you looking to use. Certain 

models are designed to predict the future. That is always very difficult to do. We can predict where the planets are going to go but 

it is very difficult to predict where the stock market is going to go 

today. That is a very small portion of what financial modeling is 

about, predicting the future. Unfortunately, that is what folks 

glean onto when they start thinking about capital requirements. A 

much larger portion of what modeling is about is understanding: if 

something happens to X, what happens to Y? You don’t have to 

predict the future in order to do that, you just need to know the 

relationships between two different things. 

Let’s take an excellent example. The world’s largest insurance 

company entered into massive amounts of credit default swaps that 

ultimately were responsible for their demise. The bet that they 

took might have turned out to be the best bet that they ever could 

have made. We don’t know because those CDSs are probably still 

out there to a certain extent. But they failed to account for the fact 
142

that, what would happen if there was a small dip in the value of 

these, and my counterparty asks for collateral? That’s not a matter 

of predicting the future, that’s just understanding this is the way 

that market works. When the value falls, your counterparty asks 

for collateral. They missed that aspect of the model. That had nothing to do with predicting the future but just in understanding how 

that worked, and that ultimately led to the demise. And you see 

that pervasive through many, many different types of models 

throughout the system. 

Chairman MILLER. It does remind me of Yoga Berra’s wisdom 

that predictions are difficult, especially about the future. Mr. 

Rickards? 

Mr. RICKARDS. Mr. Chairman, I think it is interesting that a 

number of Members and the witnesses today have referred to planetary motion as an example of models that work, but I will remind 

everyone that from 200 B.C. to 1500 A.D., the model of the universe was a geocentric model in which the sun revolved around the 

Earth. And it was obvious because you woke up in the morning and 

the sun came up over here and went down over there, and that was 

not just a religious belief, that was actually a scientific belief, and 

many brilliant mathematicians worked for centuries to write the 

equations. They weren’t automated, of course, but they wrote those 

models, and when people began observing data from improved telescopes that didn’t conform to that model, they said well, we just 

need to tweak the model a little bit. Instead of these cycles, they 

created epicycles. They were little twirls within the big twirls, and 

they kept going down that path. The model was completely wrong. 

Actually, the model was right, the paradigm was wrong. The understanding of how the world worked was wrong. The sun did not 

revolve around the Earth; the Earth revolved around the sun. 

That is my view of today. You can tweak it, you can improve it, 

you can separate the so-called fat tail and zero in on that tail, and 

there is a complex method called GARCH, Generalized 

Autoregressive Condition Heteroskedasticity and variations on 

that. They are all wrong because the paradigm is wrong, because 

the risk is not normally distributed in the first place. So I think 

these are fatally flawed. 

If a hedge fund that is non-systemically important wants to use 

this model, that is fine. They can use voodoo, as far as I am concerned, but if you are talking about a bank or regulated financial 

institution, they should be prohibited because they don’t work. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Whalen. 

Mr. WHALEN. I agree with them, and also I think Dr. Berman 

made this point. When you are talking about safety and soundness, 

you don’t want to look at a tactical short-term loss possibility, you 

want to look at the worst case, and we see that now with the banking industry. By next year, I think we are going to be looking at 

a double- or triple-digit deficit in the insurance fund, and banks are 

going to have to pay that back. No one anticipated that magnitude 

of loss. So what you have is, on the one hand, a marketplace which 

is very short term. They are working on today’s earnings, next 

quarter’s earnings, what have you, and yet over time, since GlassSteagall, we have slowly eroded the limits on risk taking. So the 

models—whether they worked or not is kind of irrelevant. We slow-
143

ly allowed banks to take more and more risk. So I think what we 

have to do first is say, what risk do we want the utility side of this 

industry, the depository, the lending, the cash distribution part of 

banks, to take, and what part do we want to force, for example, 

into the hedge fund community, which is a perfect place for risk 

taking. 

You know, we can’t come up with the answer to your question, 

Mr. Chairman, as to safety and soundness and capital adequacy, 

unless we quantify the risks that the institutions take. I will give 

you an example. Citigroup in 1991 peaked at about three and a 

half percent charge-offs versus total loans. I think they are going 

to get up to about six this time. Now, can you imagine the public 

and market reaction when the large money centers get up to something like two, maybe two and a half times their 1990 loss rate? 

But that is how severe of a skew we are seeing. In the Depression, 

we got up to five percent losses on total loans, so we are closing 

in on the 1930s. I don’t think it will be quite that bad, but we will 

see how long we stay there. That is the other question, how long 

will we see those losses? Will it be two quarters or four? This is 

the kind of question you need to answer very precisely but the only 

way you can answer your question about capital and safety and 

soundness is if you first quantify the risk taking, because otherwise 

I don’t think you can get an answer. 

And by the way, we wrote about this last week. I don’t think you 

can ask the markets to give more capital to banks. I think the G20 and Secretary Geithner are wrong. You have to reduce the risk 

taking, because I don’t think the markets would let J.P. Morgan 

have 20 percent capital assets because the returns will be too low. 

It would be low single digits at best and on a risk-adjusted basis 

I think they would be negative. This, by the way, is the context you 

ought to bear in mind. Most of the large banks on a risk-adjusted 

basis really aren’t that profitable. It is only the super-normal returns that they get from OTC derivatives, investment banking, proprietary trading that helped the whole enterprise look profitable. If 

you look at the retail side, the cash securities trading, it is barely 

profitable, really, and that is why you have seen the changes in the 

industry that you have. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Colander. 

Dr. COLANDER. In answer to your question, in social science you 

will never get the amount of exactness that you will get in natural 

sciences, mainly because the agent in social science is not an atom 

which sort of follows a set of rules, you know, it is a human being, 

it is an agent who will try to do everything he can to screw you 

every time you are trying to control him. So the thought that you 

are going to be able to design any model is pretty much impossible. 

That being said, I think models can be used and have to be used. 

We all use models. How can you not sort of picture what is going 

on? The question is, what type of models, and how many different 

models do you have in your mind, and how quickly can you jump 

from one model to another and recognize we have really moved 

there, and that is the issue that I think people are talking about. 
144

PROPOSALS FOR AVOIDING RECURRENCES OF FINANCIAL

PROBLEMS

Chairman MILLER. Interesting set of answers. Mr. Rickards did 

mention at least three proposals for avoiding a catastrophe like 

what we have had. Do the rest of you have specific proposals as 

well of how we avoid this again? I think the financial industry is 

already treating what happened last September, October—we are 

still in it—as a hiccup, something that was a fluke, will not happen 

again, we don’t have to change conduct very much. I assume all of 

you don’t agree with that, but what is it that we should do? 

Dr. BERMAN. I think there are two courses of action. I think most 

of the discussion on regulatory capital is trying to solve a symptom 

as opposed to the cure itself. A good portion of the funds come from 

investors who are feeding the big bonuses, let’s say, at large banks, 

so while there is lots of talk about the restriction on bonuses and 

whether we should hold people legally liable for clawbacks, et 

cetera, the fact is that the fuel is there. That fuel causes crisis. The 

fuel is done generally by greed, but mostly uninformed greed. Probably the number one thing that regulators can enforce is better 

transparency and better disclosure on finance itself. If more people 

understood what they were actually buying, less people would buy 

these things. Wall Street is a marketing arm as are all commercial 

companies. Their practices came from the desires of people to invest in those products, invest in those services, and invest in the 

companies themselves. If we don’t like those practices, then we 

should make it clear what those practices are and let investors 

choose whether or not they want to engage in those. That would 

dampen further—well, certainly it would help reverse this crisis a 

bit, and it would certainly dampen the ability for the market to 

even create these very, very large bubbles in the first place. 

Mr. WHALEN. One simple thing that I would add to Dr. Berman’s 

comment, and speaking as an investment banker, make the lawyers your friend. What you want to do is, instead of allowing banks 

to bring these structured assets and derivatives in an unregistered 

forum, you force them to register with the SEC, and what that does 

is two things. First off, the lawyers of the deals will not allow more 

than a certain degree of complexity, because once that deal is registered, it can be purchased by all investors, and so they will force 

simplicity onto their banks. Because otherwise they will get sued, 

and the trial lawyers will enforce this, believe me. Remember, most 

of the toxic waste, the complex structured assets, were all done at 

private placements. You can’t even get a copy of the prospectus. 

The second thing I would tell you is that, you know, in terms of 

overall market structure, we’ve got to decide whether or not, going 

back to my earlier comment, we are going to allow people to contrive of any security for any investor that doesn’t have some rational basis, some objective basis in terms of valuation, because that 

is really the key problem that we have all faced over the last couple years, is valuation. When the investors realized that they 

couldn’t get a bid from the dealer that sold them the CDO and they 

couldn’t value it by going to anybody in the cottage community, 

they just withdrew from the market and we had a liquidity problem. If you force these deals to be registered, guess what? Every 
145

month when the servicer data for the underlying becomes available, they will have to drop an 8K and then that data will be available to the community for free. We won’t have to spend hundreds 

of thousands of dollars a year to buy servicer data so that we can 

manually construct models to try and understand how a very complicated mortgage security, for example, is going to perform. You 

will open up the transparency so that the cottage industry that currently supports valuation for simple structures, which are very 

easy to value—credit card deals, auto deals—there is really no 

problem with these and they are coming back, by the way. You are 

starting to see volume come back to that market. It is about disclosure. I think Dr. Berman says it very well. 

ABUSE OF THE VAR 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Colander? You don’t have to speak on 

every topic if you don’t want to. 

Dr. Berman, everyone agrees that the VaR can be abused, has 

been abused, was certainly used foolishly in lowering capital requirements for investment banks. Without revealing proprietary information, can you give us some of the ways that you have seen 

firms abuse the VaR, or try to abuse the VaR apart from regulatory 

matters? 

Dr. BERMAN. Sure. I don’t think that VaR in itself was purposefully or willfully abused. VaR is a model that requires a significant 

number of assumptions. For example, if I buy a product, such as 

an option, then I should assume that if the value of the stock goes 

down, then the value of the option will go down. If I write that option, so I sell it, then if the stock goes up, I can lose a lot of money. 

If I don’t have the desire or the technology or the capability or the 

incentive to bother being careful about that, then I will assume 

that, if the stock goes up, I will make or lose a limited amount of 

money. That is a very, very poor assumption, which I think we 

have heard a lot today. If you take many of those poor assumptions 

and you add them up, you wind up getting VaR numbers, and not 

just VaR numbers but numbers of all sorts of different models that 

wind up being all but meaningless because of so many small poor 

assumptions that have added up into something that is just wildly 

incorrect. But folks like to believe their own numbers, especially 

when those numbers allow them to do things that they weren’t able 

to do before. So it wasn’t a willful misconduct as much as a carelessness, given the incentive structures that are out there today. 

Chairman MILLER. Anyone else? Mr. Rickards. 

PAST CONGRESSIONAL ATTEMPTS TO REGULATE THE

FINANCIAL INDUSTRY

Mr. RICKARDS. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I just want to say that my 

recommendations, if we are going back to something like GlassSteagall, there was more to that than just a walk down Memory 

Lane. I am not saying, gee, the system today has obviously failed, 

let us go back to what we had before. I actually derived these from 

my own research into the power load relationship that I talked 

about earlier, which is that scale—as scale goes up, as you triple 

or quadruple or increase by five or ten times the system, you are 
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increasing risk by a factor of 100, 1,000, 10,000. That is the nonlinear relationship that Dr. Taleb talked about earlier, and I very 

quickly came to the conclusion—well, if that is the problem, then 

descaling is the answer, and Glass-Steagall is an example of that. 

There is a little bit, I think, of—you know, easy with hindsight, but 

perhaps some arrogance in the 1998–2001 period where I think 

Members looked back at the Congress in the 1930s and said, you 

know, they were Neanderthals, they didn’t understand modern finance, they created this system. The Members of Congress in the 

1930s had actually lived through something very similar to what 

we are living through now and this was their solution. They actually had firsthand experience. 

Now, did a Member of Congress in 1934 understand fractal 

mathematics? No, it was invented in the 1960s. But they had an 

intuitive feel for the risks and I think their solution—we had a system that worked from 1934 to 1999, for 65 years. When the savings 

& loan (S&L) crisis happened in the early 1990s, it didn’t take 

hedge funds with it. When we had the banking crisis in the mid1980s, it didn’t affect the S&L industry or it didn’t affect investment banking. We were compartmented, and that is what saved 

the system. We have torn down all the walls. Commercial banks 

look like hedge funds. Investment banks look like hedge funds. 

Hedge funds originate commercial loans. It is a big business for 

them. So when everyone else is in everyone else’s business, should 

it come as any surprise that if one part fails, it all fails. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

SHOULD A GOVERNMENT AGENCY TEST FINANCIAL

PRODUCTS FOR USEFULNESS? 

Dr. Taleb earlier suggested that there be something like the FDA 

that approves—actually it was not clear to me in the earlier panel 

to what extent they were calling for government conduct or setting 

rules by government that would prohibit things, or just people not 

doing them because they were stupid, but assuming we are talking 

about rules that may be set by government, Dr. Taleb suggested 

that the FDA reviews drugs to see if they do any good, they don’t 

allow—the FDA doesn’t allow patent medicines mixed up in a bathtub to be sold to cure cancer anymore. You could do all that you 

wanted in the 1930s. You can’t do it now. And a great many of the 

financial instruments that led to all this have no readily apparent 

social utility and create enormous risk that is dimly understood by 

even the people who are selling them, certainly the CEOs and the 

boards of directors of their institutions. Should we be reviewing financial instruments for whether they have any useful purpose, and 

can you give examples of instruments that have no apparent purpose and have done great damage? Mr. Whalen. 

Mr. WHALEN. Well, I think the short answer is no. I am not a 

big fan of regulation. I don’t think the government has the competency to analyze complex securities in the first place. You would 

have to hire the people that do it. I think it is better to let the market discipline this behavior. Large buy-side investors, who I would 

remind you are probably the survivors of this period, they are the 

ones with the money, they tell the sell side what they want and 

they are going to tell the rating agencies what they want to see as 
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well, and if you increase the liability to the issuers by forcing disclosure, by forcing SEC registration, you are going to see simplicity. 

Because otherwise my friends at the trial bar are going to come 

over the hill like the barbarians, and they are going to feast, and 

I think that is the way you do it. You don’t want to get the government into a role where they have to make judgments about securities, because, frankly, who would you ask? The folks at the Fed? 

I mean, the Fed is populated by monetary economists who couldn’t 

even work on Wall Street. I mean, I love them dearly, I go fishing 

with a lot of these people but I would not ever let them have any 

operational responsibility because they just don’t have the competency. 

So I think we have to try and take a minimalist approach that 

is effective, and the way you do that is by making the issuer retain 

a portion of the deal that they bring so that they have to own some 

of the risk. You make them make a market in these securities too. 

They can’t just abandon their clients when they bring some complex deal and not even make a bid for it. That is a big part of the 

problem. If you make the dealers retain some risk and retain responsibility, then I think you will see change. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Colander. 

Dr. COLANDER. I wanted to expand a little bit on regulation from 

a different perspective, again, agreeing very much with what Mr. 

Whalen said, that there is a problem with government regulation, 

and we can go back and think about Glass-Steagall. You know, people responded to Glass-Steagall and said here is the problem, you 

know, that we deregulated. The problem was, during that time 

there was enormous technological change. We had to change the 

regulations, and now you have to—regulation isn’t a one-time 

thing. It has got to be continually changed, and here is the problem. My students, when we asked how many were going on, you 

know, sort of—Paul Volker came up and spoke and he said, you 

know, big audience, ‘‘How many of you are planning to go on and 

work for government?’’ and I think two people raised their hand. 

Then he said, ‘‘How many people are planning to go on to Wall 

Street?’’ You know, you had all this large number, and this was a 

number of years ago. When my students coming out of Middlebury 

College as seniors can earn $150,000 to $200,000 in the first or second year and somebody coming into government can get, what, as 

a GS–8 or 9, you know, sort of $34,000 or something. You know, 

where are you going to go, how are you going to get the expertise 

to do it? And so what happens is, you know, you have an unfair 

system there, where no matter how much regulation you get, given 

the pay structure, given what’s there, the people who are having 

it designed will be able to snow anybody who is trying to regulate 

it, and that is why very much I think you have to design it, not 

so we have to regulate it, but it is self-regulatory, and that, I think, 

is what you are hearing from people, that you have responsibility. 

If it’s too big to fail, we have to regulate it so therefore let us see 

that is not too big to fail by making it smaller, that we structure 

it by the people who know the institutional structure, so that here 

you figure why you won’t make that deal. But not for government 

to be coming in mainly because government will get beat. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Rickards. 
148

Mr. RICKARDS. Mr. Chairman, I think the idea that there would 

be a government panel of some kind that would vet and approve 

financial products in the manner that the FDA approves drugs is 

probably not workable, probably beyond the ability of government. 

But for example, credit default swaps: There is actually a use for 

them. They are socially useful when they are used to hedge a position in the underlying bond, but they become a casino ultimately 

underwritten by the taxpayers when they are used with no insurable interest. So it is hard enough understanding what a credit default swap is, but to get that distinction just right, when it may 

or may not be useful, would be extremely difficult. But I do believe 

there should be a quarantine in the sense that—let’s have these 

products in hedge funds, in long-run investors or maybe with mild 

leverage. Let us keep them out of FDIC-insured banks and other 

institutions that perform this utility function and are in effect gambling with taxpayers’ money. 

I also endorse Dr. Colander’s suggestion that, in the National 

Science Foundation, in the peer review process, there is a rule for 

looking at these things, perhaps not in the regulatory sense of approving them but in the academic sense of understanding them. 

And I believe what Dr. Colander is referring to is what I call ‘cognitive diversity.’ Let’s just not have a bunch of economists or, for 

that matter, a bunch of physicists but let us have physicists, economists, behavioral scientists, psychologists and others work together. I think it is interesting that Dr. Kahneman at Princeton 

won the Nobel Prize in economics a few years ago. He is the world’s 

leading behavioral psychologist. He wouldn’t describe himself as an 

economist, but he made very valuable contributions to economics. 

If you get 16 Ph.D.’s in a room and they all went to one of four 

schools, let us say Chicago, MIT, Harvard and Stanford, and they 

are all fine schools, you will actually improve the decision-making 

if you ask two or three of them to leave and invite in the first couple people who walk down the street. You will lower the average 

IQ, but you will improve the overall outcome because those people 

will know something that the Ph.D.’s don’t. So at the National 

Science Foundation level, to encourage that kind of collaboration I 

think is very valuable. 

I have actually—I am involved in a field called econophysics 

which basically is understanding economics using some physics 

tools, and I don’t claim it is the answer to all these things but it 

does make some valuable contributions. But when I speak to—I 

have spoken at Los Alamos and the Applied Physical Laboratory, 

and I get a very warm reception. The physicists are very intrigued 

and they see the applications. When you talk to economists, they 

have no interest. They are like, what do physicists have to tell us. 

And I think more collaboration would be helpful. 

IDENTIFYING FIRMS THAT ARE ‘TOO BIG TO FAIL’

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Rickards, you know from personal experience that it is not just depository institutions that are systemically 

significant. How do we identify—I think you and Dr. Colander both 

have spoken about the problem of scale. How do we reduce the size 

of institutions? How do we identify the ones that are systemically 

important, either because of their size or their interconnectedness, 
149

as inappropriate for the kind of risk taking . . . that if we assume 

that there are some institutions, most hedge funds, that can be 

born and die without any great consequence to the rest of the planet, and that if they want to use voodoo, they can. How do we identify those that we have different standards for? Mr. Whalen. 

Mr. WHALEN. Well, I think there is two simple answers. First off, 

we have to revisit market share limits. You have already seen this 

in process with the FDIC because they have started to levy premiums against total assets, less capital, instead of domestic deposits. I think that is a very healthy change. But perhaps more important, we have to let institutions fail, because if you convince investors that you are going to put a Lehman Brothers or a Washington 

Mutual into bankruptcy, they are going to change their behavior, 

and I think both of those events were inevitable, by the way. I 

think it is ridiculous to argue that Lehman could be saved. They 

were for sale for almost a year. Nobody wanted to buy it. So, you 

know, at the end of the day, if we don’t allow failure, and we don’t 

inoculate our population against risk by letting them feel some 

pain from time to time, then we will repeat the mistake. 

Last point, we have got to get the Fed out of bank supervision. 

Monetary economists like big banks. They love them. I worked in 

the applications area of the Fed in New York. I can’t recall a merger, a large bank merger that they have ever said no to. I worked 

on the ‘‘Manny Hanny’’ (Manufacturers Hanover Trust) transaction, I worked on the Chemical Bank merger, following that with 

Chase. In each case, you could make a very strong case that those 

were bad mergers. They destroyed value. And then look at Bank 

of America. They had to buy Countrywide because they were the 

chief lender to Countrywide’s conduit. They had no choice. It was 

kind of like J.P. Morgan buying Bear Stearns. There really was no 

choice. But then we have the Fed slam Merrill Lynch into Bank of 

America to save a primary dealer. These are the monetary economists saying oh, dear, we want to have a few big primary dealers 

we can manage and deal with, it is easier for us. Well, I think that 

is a really skewed perspective. I would like to see another agency 

responsible for approving mergers of financial institutions that actually looks at it on an objective basis and says, is this a good idea, 

because we have got a couple mergers, Wells, Wachovia and Bank 

of America with Merrill Lynch that I am not sure are going to 

work. I think both of those institutions may have to be restructured and downsized significantly in the next couple of years. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Rickards. 

MONITORING AND ANALYZING HEDGE FUND ACTIVITY AND

RISK

Mr. RICKARDS. Mr. Chairman, on the issue of what is a systemically important hedge fund, at the end of the day there will be 

some element of subjectivity in it—whether a $10 billion hedge 

fund is systemically important, but if you have $9.8 billion, you are 

not. It will be a little bit arbitrary and it can’t be based solely on 

size. It has to be based on the complexity. But the first step is 

transparency. You will never be able to make any informed decisions like that without good information, and every hedge fund 

manager—I have worked in hedge funds banks and investment 
150

banks—they will resist that for various reasons but I don’t understand why the United States Government couldn’t create a facility 

that would keep that information on a secure basis. We keep military secrets, we keep intelligence secrets, we keep other information confidential. You could have a firm like, you know, IBM Global 

Services that would come in, build a facility. It could be secure, get 

clear people running it, and then just say to all hedge funds, look, 

you have to give us all of your information, all of your positions, 

all of your factors in a standardized format, in an automated format once a week, we will keep it in a totally secure environment, 

it will not leak out, but we are going to take that and load it into, 

you know, covariance metrics. We are also going to do that for your 

firm, and we are going to have an idea at that point when you are 

taking systemic risks, and at that point there ought to be an ability 

to intervene. And I agree with Mr. Whalen, it should not be the 

Federal Reserve. They do a lousy job with their primary task of 

preventing inflation, and I don’t know why they have been given 

all these other jobs. But there certainly would be expertise in the 

government to do that much, and then to intervene when necessary. 

Dr. BERMAN. Adding that, taking all that data, bringing it together——

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Berman. 

Dr. BERMAN.—and putting it into a large covariance matrix sort 

of sounds like VaR. I mean, that is—so you come back to those 

same questions all the time when you say how do we make predictions? This may sound like I am answering the question with 

the same exact question, but the best way to protect against this 

is to ask the question to the bank: what would happen if you 

failed? And then determine what the outcome to society or to the 

economy would be. It is not based on the size of the bank, it is 

based on, look at what would happen, not the probability but if the 

bank fails, if a hedge fund fails, what actually will wind up happening, what are the knock-on effects. That requires an enormous 

amount of transparency but you don’t need to necessarily make the 

predictions about that, you just need to follow that thread through. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Colander. 

Dr. COLANDER. One of the principles, you know, sort of within economics, is taxes have to have reasons and everything else. And I 

think one of the things that thinking of the economy as a complex 

system brings up is that bigness is, per se, bad, you know, sort of 

an interconnection is, so we have lost the sense that there can be 

a tax on ‘bigness’ so that people can decide but it is built within 

that. And to start thinking that, here, if you have a complex system, you have got to keep a whole number of different elements, 

and the only way you are going to be able to do that—because 

there is enormous pressure to grow—is to somehow design within 

the system a counterweight to that, and so thinking along those 

lines, I think is something that follows thinking of the economy as 

a complex system. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Whalen. 

Mr. WHALEN. I will come back to something Mr. Broun said 

about the community banks because I think it is very important, 

and you all are going to be hearing about this a lot next year. If 
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you are going to tax institutions based on risk, and I think that is 

sound, you start with the FDIC. The big banks should pay more 

than the little banks, and when we see the size of the hole that 

we have to fill in over the next, I don’t know, 25 years from this 

crisis, I think that is going to become a very compelling argument. 

The community bankers are going to be living up here next year 

when they start seeing the estimates for what they have to give up 

in revenue and income to fill in this hole. Remember, we are still 

paying for the S&L crisis. There is still debt out there that we are 

paying interest on. We are going to be paying for this crisis for 100 

years. That is how big the numbers are. So think of that as a load 

on the economy. That is kind of the cost of modeling run amuck, 

and, you know, I am serious about this. We are going to be paying 

for this, the banking industry, consumers, investors in banks are 

going to be paying for this for many, many decades. 

Chairman MILLER. We are—Mr. Rickards. 

Mr. RICKARDS. Just briefly. The inverse of complexity is scale. 

You can have complexity at the small scale, a medium scale or a 

large scale. Failure at the first two will not destroy you. Failure at 

the third may, and so I am not against complexity. There is going 

to be complexity. But, again, Dr. Taleb’s example, an elephant is 

a very complex organism, but if it dies, the entire ecosystem doesn’t 

crash. And so let us keep these things in boxes and reduce the 

scale as the antidote to complexity. 

Chairman MILLER. We are at the end of our time, but I want to 

thank all of you for being here. Under the rules of the Committee, 

the record will remain open for two weeks for additional statements from Members and for answers to any follow-up questions 

the Committee may have for the witnesses. Again, I appreciate 

your willingness to come and testify, and it will be useful to have 

all of you as resources for the future as well. Thank you very much. 

The witnesses are excused and the hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:30 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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