Stress Testing the System: Simulating the Global Consequences of the Next Financial Crisis. Questo articolo non è disponibile.Stress Testing the System: Simulating the Global Consequences of the Next Financial Crisis

Getting practitioners and scholars to focus on the policy problems associated with low-probability, high-cost events can often best be done by utilizing scenario-based simulations. The Council on Foreign Relations Project on Financial Vulnerabilities conducted such an exercise in January 2000. Stress Testing the System hypothesizes a fictional scenario in which a future financial crisis originates in the United States but quickly fans out to envelop financial markets around the world. The potential impacts on the global economy, on U.S. foreign relations, and on national security are played out in an intense financial "war game" with 75 current and former policymakers, market participants, and experts on finance, economics, foreign policy, and national security playing the roles of key government officials and agencies. This book tells the story of how the simulation was organized, how it worked, what was decided, and what the implications are for improving real-world policymaking. Anyone interested in U.S. government decision-making will want to read this book.

What if you took seventy-five of the most experienced professionals in the fields of finance, economics, foreign policy, and national security and confronted them with two dozen policy problems triggered by a massive contraction in the stock markets? That is the premise of Stress Testing the System: Simulating the Global Consequences of the Next Financial Crisis. Based on a policy simulation that was conducted before the September 11,2001 attacks and is now even more relevant, Council Fellow Roger Kubarych draws several key lessons: government policymakers need to dedicate time and resources to identifying the principal vulnerabilities of financial and political systems-and anticipating their possible consequences. While it won't help them predict a crisis, playing out a variety of low-probability, high-cost events will leave leaders better prepared when one occurs. Kubarych notes that policymakers' first priority in a financial crisis is to stabilize markets-all other problems are subordinate. This book is more than a revealing account of the lessons and implications of time- and crisis-pressured decision making: it is an instructive guide to organizing business and financial "war-gaming." Kubarych provides an insider's look at the collaboration among great minds that led to a successfully crafted scenario played out with real-world accuracy.