ZeroHedge weighs in.
Taleb also touches on something we have been arguing for since 2009, namely that if banks are to expect bail outs whenever they blow up, they should be treated as utilities, with full caps on comp, net income, and earnings. To wit: “Banks are utilities. I don’t understand why we’ve been bailing out banks since 1983 – they are utilities. They are de facto civil servants.”
Finally Taleb loses it by comparing Wall Street to the mafia: “I am not an idealist. I am someone who doesn’t want to be paying the $14 million dollars for this lady Ina Drew, which is more than John Gotti the mafioso got.” Well, neither does anyone else. But, sadly, even Nassim now realizes that it is the financial mafia who owns this country and calls all the shots.
Ironically, and we are surprised Taleb does not understand this, the only thing that can lead to change is if we have 1000 Ina Drews putting on mega fat tail trades they don’t understand, all of which eventually blow up in the bank’s prop trading faces, leading to the final Wall Street collapse. Only this time we have a feeling that if the Wall Street controlled Congress and Senate do bailout their financial lobby friends with another under the table $28 trillion rescue operation, the results will be far more bloody and lethal for everyone involved than back in 2008, when former Goldmanite Hank Paulson was waving his coopted three page term sheet in front of the sheep in Congress, simply to save the firm he used to run.
via Nassim Taleb Is Angry That Not Even John Gotti Got Paid As Much As JPM’s Ina Drew | ZeroHedge.