"When you have cancer, sometimes it hurts to remove the tumor," he said. "They're not removing the tumor."
"It is a matter of risk and responsibility, and I think the risks that were there before, these problems are still there," he said. "We still have a very high level of debt, we still have leadership that's literally incompetent ..."
Should Obama reappoint Ben Bernanke? Taleb doesn't think so. "Bernanke belongs to a school of economics that is not in synch with the complex system. By having Bernanke there you're rewarding failure."
Meanwhile, three-fourths of investors surveyed recently said that Bernanke has earned another term, but that plays right into Taleb's arguments: by instituting policies that prop up markets, Bernanke has pleased market participants without really having fixed anything long-term.
Check out the video below to watch the whole interview.

Bestselling author and financial markets guru Nassim Nichola Taleb has a novel idea: Try to make the US economy as different from Bernie Madoff as we can.

