Are you scared of bungee jumping? Mountain climbing? Or even just crossing the street? Then Matt Taibbi wants you to consider becoming a banker.
In a blog post Thursday, criticizing UK officials for appointing ex-Goldmanite Mark Carney as governor of the Bank of England, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi argues that Carney will likely do little to change the country's banking culture.
"What the banking system really needs is a guy who will step in and force bankers to go back to being boring, risk-averse drips," Taibbi wrote in a Rolling Stone blog post Thursday. "What we have instead are coked-up wannabe big shots straight out of Boiler Room who are washing Mexican drug money and laundering Middle Eastern cash and playing around with wild price-fixing schemes." (If you didn't know, the financial industry has struggled with a number of scandals this year.)
Critics say financial deregulation has allowed banks to become bigger and more aggressive. But studies show stock traders tend to be competitive risk-takers anyway, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said earlier this year that it would be difficult to alter the financial industry's nature.
"You can't legislate away stupidity and risk-taking and greed and recklessness," Geithner said at an event in April. "What you can do is make sure when it happens it does not cause too much damage."