Then go check the SEC filings. If they refute Taleb's numbers, bring in the Census as corroborating data.

I think that it is disingenuous to paint the entire industry as being composed of individuals out to cheat the system. I think that it makes more sense to note the behavioral economics at work.

This is precisely what happened, though. The large investment banks went public and externalized their risks. 10 years of bonuses (privatized profit), then a big blowup (socialized loss). Was it planned that way? Does it matter?

By contrast, private partnerships never developed as much exposure or lost as much money, since they could not externalize risks to the same degree.

I bet you worked for an LLC, no?

There is no great, malevolent force working in finance. The industry was governed by (and possibly still is) some pretty lackluster regulations, but it is a questionable premise to paint the entire industry as willfully fraudulent.

Why not? Because you were once involved in investment management yourself, and you are a good & decent person, and therefore the industry as a whole must be comprised of similar people and follow similar patterns of behavior and judgement?

This is not really the case. It is more the case that the regulators are often underpaid (relative to what they could make in the private banking industry) and over-worked (due to staffing cuts). This creates an accelerated revolving door between the public and private spheres. This revolving door makes it very hard to get any good regulations out of our current institutions.

So you think paying regulators more would somehow auto-magically deal with regulatory capture? Seriously?