Nothing Has Changed

From the same article in NYT, I can only that this is just disgusting.

Critics of the [financial] industry argue that the pullback in risk will be only
temporary without deep regulatory changes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a
statistician, trader, and author, has argued for years that financial firms
chronically underestimate their risks and must be managed much more
cautiously.

Mr. Taleb warns that the system has grown riskier since last fall. The
extensive government support that began after Lehman collapsed will lead
investors to assume that governments will always prevent major banks from
collapsing, he said.

So investors will lend money to the financial industry on easy terms.
In turn, financial institutions will use that cheap money to make risky loans
and trades. The banks will keep the profits when their bets pay off, while
taxpayers will swallow the losses when the bets go bad and threaten the system.

Economists call the phenomenon moral hazard. Bankers have a different
term: I.B.G. The phrase implies that by the time a deal goes sour, “I’ll be
gone,” after having received a sizable bonus.