Nassim Taleb on banking and failure

I want banks to be inconsequential. In other words, they can make all the mistakes they want without dragging in the rest of us. I like a society in which people can make mistakes, in which, when a bank makes a mistake, they get destroyed. Because evolution teaches by destroying. I want to live in a society in which banks can make all the mistakes and hire all the risk managers they want. All these idiots can do whatever they want without it affecting me.

~ Nassim Taleb, NYU professor and author of The Black Swan, "Interview by Tom Keene," Bloomberg Markets, August 2010