Morgan Housel Tail Events

The thing that makes tail events easy to under-appreciate is how easy it is to underestimate how things compound. How, for example, 9/11 prompted the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, which helped drive the housing bubble, which led to the financial crisis, which led to a poor jobs market, which led tens of millions to seek a college education, which led to $1.6 trillion in student loans with a 10.8% default rate. It's not intuitive to link hijackers to the current weight of student loans, but that's what happens in a world driven by a few outlier tail events.

(The Psychology of Money)