Ron Paul 2012: Nassim Taleb Sees 'No Other Solution’

Nassim Taleb, author of the risk-management best seller The Black Swan, emerged from a self-imposed media blackout to support Ron Paul's 2012 campaign for president, saying the iconoclastic Texas congressman is the only candidate offering the right remedies for the U.S. economy

I have no other solution. It's my duty as a citizen, as a person who lives here and as a taxpayer who doesn't want to be hoodwinked in the long run by bureaucrats, Taleb said Tuesday in an interview with CNBC, his first media appearance since 2010.

He said he backs Paul despite the candidate's long-shot chance at winning the Republican nomination and plans to take part in a fund-raiser for him.

I'm supporting him regardless of the chances, Taleb said of Paul. Whether he has 1 percent or 900 percent, I'm supporting him.

The former Wall Street trader who made a fortune anticipating the financial crises of 1987 and 2000 believes there are four looming threats to U.S. stability today -- fiscal deficits, the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy, an overly militaristic foreign policy and bailouts of financial institutions.

Taleb said that while President Barack Obama and the major Republican candidates offer Novocain, or weak solutions, only Paul -- a physician -- has prescribed chemotherapy, or fundamental reforms that address the country's structural problems.

Paul has vowed to cut $1 trillion in government spending in the first year of his presidency, led the charge to end the Federal Reserve System and expressed staunch opposition to immoral bailouts.

These positions differ from those of the Republican and Democratic establishment, which Taleb says have made the nation's problems worse.

Four years after the global financial crisis, financial institutions responsible for the crisis are still in business, the Fed still maintains its super-loose policy and public debt has ballooned, Taleb pointed out.

The U.S. economy, in other words, may have become more vulnerable to what the author calls black swan events that can wreak havoc once again.

You don't gamble with future generations' money and you don't gamble with hyperinflation, Taleb said.

The heterodox writer, who is Lebanese-American, said he shuns U.S. Treasurys and owns stocks and real estate instead to hedge against hyperinflation.

He also owns euros.

In spite of the bad press, they know the problems in Europe and here we're not aware of it, he told CNBC.

Europe has imposed austerity measures -- cutting public spending and raising taxes -- on heavily indebted countries such as Greece and Portugal, while Britain and Germany have done so voluntarily.

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has met Taleb several times. The two men are reportedly close and admire each another.

Nassim Taleb is probably the closest thing which Cameron has to a guru, Fraser Nelson, editor of conservative journal the Spectator, told the BBC.