Nassim Taleb at Davos (2009)

Transcript:

Presenter: Show of hands, who thinks this will be repeated? Why is that?

Nassim Taleb: Can I tell you what’s happening? This happened in the past, it keeps repeating itself. We keep bailing them out. The only way this will not be repeated this if you have punishment. The only place in which you had punishment is here switzerland, they went back and clawed back the bonuses. Until we do that we will always live under moral hazard from banks.

Presenter: So the leaders who were in charge taking on that risk, selling those complex products, should give money back?

Nassim Taleb: Yes, there is a gentleman who is a government official Bob Rubin. I think he pocketed 150 Million dollars from Citibank. Now I don’t know how many American tax payers we have here but we are paying for that. That should not happen again but it had happened, it has happened several times in history, unless you have punishment you will never be immune from these abuses.

Presenter: So the bonuses for the last how many years?

Nassim Taleb: I don’t care, whatever, something. In Switzerland they settled it. They did it very properly and very responsibly. This is the only country here, Switzerland that acted responsibly.