Professor Taleb Speaks on Debt.

"NASSIM TALEB: Well, before talking about regulation -- and, again, regulators failed us here -- let's talk about the economic establishment. All these measures I hear, oh, transitory deficit, oh, we'll repay it back, come from people using models that did not predict what's going on. They did not see the elephant in the room -- too much debt -- and all these models are completely unpredictive of anything. So don't predict. Let's try to lower debt so we don't have to predict.

As to the regulators, we have to realize that the regulators got us here by favoring a risk measurement system by banks -- and banks lost $4.3 trillion on failures of risk management systems."

and later...

"[regulation] is not a panacea. I agree, regulation can do a good job, but just blind regulation is not the solution. The solution to me is the cancer we have in the system -- too much debt -- and let's stop talking about painkillers. Let's remove the tumor.

... It's painful to remove the tumor. But the sooner we remove it, the better, instead of delaying, saying, "Transitory, transitory, transitory." The debt today is the same debt as we had a year ago. Actually, it's increasing."

Video to see Professor Taleb disagree with Professor Blinder's rosy outlook.

Transcript for those who like to read.

Point of fact: Nassim Taleb predicted, warned about, and made millions of dollars off of the financial meltdown in October 2008. Alan Blinder is the originator of the "Cash for Clunkers" program. Just... throwing that out there.