Bernanke was appointed to a second term last month by President Barack Obama, while Geithner took his job after being the president of the New York Fed from November 2003 through January of this year. Current National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers was treasury secretary between 1999 and 2001.

“Bernanke, Geithner and Summers didn’t see the crisis coming so why are they still there?” Taleb told a group of business people in Hong Kong. Bernanke is like “a pilot who didn’t see a hurricane,” he added.

Bernanke said on Sept. 15 that the U.S. recession had probably ended, following a financial meltdown that caused more than $1.6 trillion of losses at the world’s biggest financial institutions. Taleb said the risks that caused the global crisis are “still with us” and urged the U.S. government to avoid burdening the public or future generations with the cost of the bank bailout. The national debt is $11.77 trillion, U.S. Treasury Department figures show.

“The solution is simple: we have to sweat it out,” he said. The U.S. has “to kill the debt,” not pass it on.