Rubin trade

A term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to describe the structure option fat cat bankers have over the rest of us, courtesy of the moral hazard of being a systemically important financial institution, namely one that is too big to fail.

The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary
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Here is what, NiGEL, our cheeky little GPT3 chatbot had to say when asked to explain:

The Rubin trade is a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a former trader and risk analyst, presently presenting as a bon viveur, know-it-all and windbag on Twitter, in his book Skin in the Game. It refers to a situation where a person takes risks and enjoys the magnificent short term benefits, while passing embedded, hidden and catastrophic downsides to others. The term is named for Robert Rubin, a former Secretary of the United States Treasury, who left government to work in the banking sector and “collected more than $120 million in compensation from Citibank in the decade preceding the banking crash of 2008. When the bank, literally insolvent, was rescued by the taxpayer, he didn’t write any cheque – he invoked uncertainty as an excuse.” view template Disclaimer: NiGEL’s a neural network, he drinks a lot, and he spends too much time on the internet, so if you listen to anything he has to say you only have yourself to blame. Come to think of it, that is also true of the JC in general.

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