Read This Now - Department Of Worst Case Scenarios

Ezra Klein links to Dylan Ratigan writing about the state of the financial world one year after Lehman Brothers collapsed and wonders if what we need is a Secretary of Nay-saying...

There's no cabinet-level agency dedicated to worst-case thinking (calling Secretary Roubini?), no Department of Buzz-Harshing whirring away somewhere on the periphery of the system. But that's what we need. Because the next economic crisis will look different. Overconfidence hasn't been banished from the financial system, much less the human psyche. Nor is there a regulatory measure capable of protecting against fads and convenient rationalizations. The result is we're giving regulators the power to stop bubbles, but not changing the necessary preconditions for bubbles. And granted, that's difficult to do. But at the least, we could create a louder alarm system, so it would be even harder for those caught in the excitement of the moment to say they never heard the warnings.