Another Lebanese genius. On the front page of An-Nahar, there was a square declaring that "a Lebanese on the best-seller list in the US." I checked, and he appears on the on-line version of the list. But when I checked further, the guy is indeed a Lebanese. Here is one reviewer of the book: "Taleb ridicules distinguished economists while presenting himself as a lonely, persecuted genius. He declares that Harry M. Markowitz and William F. Sharpe, winners (with Merton H. Miller) of the 1990 Nobel Prize for theories of capital markets, sold “quack remedies” that “everyone in the business world” knew to be “fraud.” Taleb asserts that another Nobelist, Myron S. Scholes, flew into a “state of rage” on hearing his ideas, while a member of the French Academy of Sciences “blew a fuse ... right when I showed empirical evidence of the role of black swans in markets. He turned red with anger, had difficulty breathing and started hurling insults at me.”Criticizing the accomplished is healthy; mocking them because they are accomplished is sophomoric."
But An-Nahar, typically, leaves such a wrong impression about him as he does not seem to be a proud Lebanese on his site.