Ex-Wall Street Trader: End Bonuses!

Leave it to the New York Times op-ed page to turn handwritten Occupy Wall Street signs into a well-argued policy essay. Former Wall Street trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb offers a simple fix to the financial system woes: outlaw bonuses in all too-big-to-fail institutions. The move would disincentivize reckless risk taking, tie compensation directly to the fate of their trades, and greatly reduce the need for future bailouts. The same principle applies to all jobs, he writes: “Cooks should taste their own cooking; engineers should stand under the bridges they have designed when the bridges are tested.”