"You may have green shoots, whatever you want to call them, you may have temporary relief, but you are still in a world that's breaking," Taleb said ...

"We're in the middle of a crash," Taleb said. "So if I'm going to forecast something, it is that it's going to get worse, not better."

The government needs to deleverage debt and not try stimulus packages that will inflate assets, he said.

"What makes me very pessimistic in not seeing any leadership or awareness on parts of government on what has to be done, which is deleverage $40-to-$70 trillion," Taleb said.

"The monkey on our back is debt," he added.

via 'We're in the Middle of a Crash': Black Swan - Financials * Europe * News * Story - CNBC.com.

Another line from Taleb in this interview, paraphrased from memory: "The people making predictions about the economy, which of them saw the current situation coming? None of them. So why believe them now?"

I read Taleb's "Fooled By Randomness" and "Black Swan" a couple years ago, and found them insightful.