Nassim "Black Swan" Taleb: Forget Egypt...

Nassim "Black Swan" Taleb: Forget Egypt...
Another critical Middle Eastern country could plunge into crisis
Thursday, February 03, 2011

From Bloomberg:

Saudi Arabia is "perfectly unstable," like Egypt, where 10-day protests are threatening the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, Nassim Taleb, author of "Black Swan," said today.

Taleb, a principal at Universa Investments LP whose 2007 bestselling book argued that history is littered with rare events that can't be predicted by trends, said that countries like Lebanon and Italy that suffer recurring political crises are safer for investors.

"A perfectly fragile country is a country, say like Egypt" before "the recent events, where there is no variation, and then – puff – you got a crisis and it's mayhem," Taleb told an conference in Moscow hosted by Troika Dialog. "So Egypt is perfectly unstable, Saudi Arabia, countries like that.''

Supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power since 1981, clashed today for the second day in Cairo's Tahrir Square with demonstrators who have been demanding the 82-year-old leader's resignation since Jan. 25.

The 86-year-old ruler of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, has backed the Egyptian government and condemned the protesters, while trying to address imbalances in the largest Arab economy. The government announced in August a $385 billion, five-year spending plan as the kingdom tries to reduce a jobless rate of as high as 43 percent for Saudis between the ages of 20 and 24.

Pact With Clerics

Almost 40 percent of the population in Saudi Arabia, which is the world's largest oil exporter, is under 15. The country is ruled by the Al Saud family, which relies on support from the Sunni Muslim clerical establishment under a 1744 pact.

The political turmoil that engulfed the Middle East, sparked by last month's ouster of Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, is continuing to spread, with protests now in Yemen. With high youth populations, countries in the region suffer from unemployment and dissatisfaction with corruption and long-entrenched leaders.

The cost of insuring the sovereign debt of Saudi Arabia has soared 56 percent since Jan. 27 to 117.4, according to CMA prices for credit-default swaps.

"I don't focus on political stability, nor do I specialize in olive groves," Taleb said. "My specialty is risk and fragility."

To contact the reporters on this story: Paul Abelsky in Moscow at pabelsky@bloomberg.net; Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Willy Morris at wmorris@bloomberg.net.


Source;

http://www.thedailycrux.com/content/6850/Saudi_Arabia/eml


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