What "black swans" can threaten the global economy

Last week, the US data analytics company Palantir Technologies disclosed in a financial statement (.pdf) that it spent about $51 million to buy gold bars that will be stored in a secure location in the Northeast of the United States . The explanation of these investments aroused the interest of investors and analysts: the operating DIRECTOR of the company, Shyam Sankar, said that in the future one must be prepared for the emergence of new “black swans”, without specifying what kind of events these could be.

Palantir develops data mining software (automated data mining based on the analysis of huge arrays) used by the US military and intelligence agencies. A "black swan" is an unpredictable event, the probability of which is extremely small, and the impact is huge. The expression was coined by philosopher and former trader Nassim Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability. RBC tried to assess what kind of events of this type are possible in the global economy.