THUD! (No, it's not the stock market.)

(UPDATE: I got the original link to the whole interview from the comments section of the excellent Calculated Risk blog, evening of 12/5 or maybe even 12/4. Amazing stuff in the comments there, as well as the postings.

UPDATE2: Hat tip to CR commenter "Hawley Smoot" for the orginal link.)

This is the sound of veteran news reporter and interviewer Charlie Rose having the living shit shocked out of him.

A soon-to-be classic moment in video journalism, IMNSHO.

See this video clip of Charlie Rose interviewing Nassim Nicholas Taleb - author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The entire interview is here.

Charlie Rose refers to Nouriel Roubini as some one who "scares the hell out of everybody when he comes here, and sits where you are". And then

((Timings below are from the entire interview.))

(15:48) Rose: How bad do you think it will get?

(15:51) Taleb: I think it will be worse than Roubini thinks

(15:54) Off camera: THUD! , which is Rose's hand slamming down on his papers and a copy of Taleb's book.

The camera returns to Rose and he is staring at Taleb with his mouth open in utter shock.

Strangely, Taleb says he thinks Henry "Paulson seems to be doing a good job (particularly that they were part of the problem developing)" in steering the world to what Taleb calls "Capitalism 2.0", a world where banks are public utilities, because nobody who is backed by the public will ever be allowed to take this much risk ever again; a lot less debt; most hedge funds are gone; risk is taken with both gains and losses strictly privatized; and stock prices are MUCH lower and much less involved in the making of money by most people.