A government full of academics... what an idea!

Megan McArdle:

"....If you want a really nice chap who's spent a lot of time studying one fairly small aspect of the financial system, academics abound. If, however, you define experience as having a broad sense of how all this stuff works, and an intimate knowledge of the broad US financial regulation system . . . well, where exactly do you get experience with the whole US financial system without, like, working in the US financial system, as either a banker or a regulator?

Financial expertise is not nearly as interchangeable as most people think. For the same reason that you do not want your dermatologist removing your gallbladder, someone like Nassim Taleb would not make a good regulator of the financial system. Nassim Taleb knows a lot about the markets he trades in. He does not, I would wager, know much about the theory behind US securities law."