Cameron versus Black Swan man

I got up super-early this morning – well, 6.30am – to attend a debate between David Cameron and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, at the RSA.

Taleb was full of fascinating intellectual ideas but none seemed particularly relevant to UK politics or the big issues (probably) facing Cameron next year.

The result was a bit like watching a couple on an awkward first date where neither is quite following the other’s thread.

Here is my take on it for ft.com

UPDATE

I predicted yesterday – somewhat satirically – that a newspaper would probably claim that Cameron was predicting a default, despite his insistence that he did not expect it to happen.

He raised the possibility of the government not being able to meet its obligations but then said very clearly: “I have never predicted that is going to happen.”

This morning’s front page splash in the Guardian: “Cameron: UK could default on its debt”.

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on the UK political scene

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The authors

Jim Pickard joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the Financial Times since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.

Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.

Contributors

Elizabeth Rigby, the FT's chief political correspondent, joined the lobby team in September 2010. Elizabeth has worked at the FT for more than a decade and was most recently its consumer industries editor.

Helen Warrell is the FT's UK reporter, covering home affairs, crime and policing. She joined the FT in 2008 and has spent time as a reporter in the Brussels bureau and more recently, editing the paper's Asia coverage on the world news desk.

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