A black swan meets some ugly ducklings.

Although Taleb was impressed with Geithner, his anger has hardly dissipated. "The center of the problem is that they don't know the center of the problem," he says. "They have not yet entertained the idea that what we may be witnessing is a total failure of a way of doing business."

It would be great to end this story the way Frank Capra ends Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: with a valiant filibuster that brings the country to its senses. But so far Washington and Wall Street are treating Taleb more like another Jimmy Stewart character, the one in Harvey, whose best friend is an invisible 6-foot rabbit.