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Comment by neilk | Hacker News Reader

Taleb wants financial services to come in two flavors: boring, predictable, public banking utiliies; and no-safety-net no-bailout risk-taking investment.

He sees current regulation as helping to create the monsters we have now, where the risk-takers are allowed to play with the money that's supposed to be stable.

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"Taleb wants financial services to come in two flavors: boring, predictable, public banking utiliies; and no-safety-net no-bailout risk-taking investment."

But how do you get there? How do you make sure they don't spin out of control or even how do you decide which firms to break up and how? (I don't disagree, I am genuinely interested in learning how he sees it can be implemented and without new significant regulations no less).

One way to make banks boring and predictable would be to define precisely what kind of products they are allowed to sell. This sounds like what Taleb would want, but it don't think it would be good to entirely eliminate innovation.

But if regulators would forbid any product valued by models they don't understand, it would probably be a good start.

Taleb has no problem with innovation - as long as the risk of the innovation is borne by the innovators, or investors putting their own money at risk. The problem occurs when people bet other people's money, reaping nost of the rewards when the bet pays off, and incurring little loss when the bet goes wrong.

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