I refer to the recent post by my former colleague as an Executive Director in the World Bank, Mr. Biaggio Bossone, titled “The IMF, the U.S. Subprime Crisis, and Global Financial Governance”. In it Bossone discusses “the importance of setting up warning systems to anticipate critical events” and that “it is crucial to wonder how the failure to detect early signs of the crisis was possible at the IMF, the multilateral organization that is statutorily mandated to oversee international financial stability, and avails itself of unique authority and resources to do so.” I agree with much though not with all. Though I was 100% sure that a crisis of the sort we are now having was going to happen, and of which I alerted anyone willing to listen since late 2002, I never had the faintest clue of where and when, what I have called the AAA-bomb, was going to hit. I mention this to make clear the enormous difference that exists between trying to avoid a crisis from happening and predicting when and where the crisis will strike. In fact just appointing the IMF as an official sentry to lookout for a crisis sets it up top be either captured by the parties interested in silencing it, or to make it a part of the problem as its alerts could help to detonate a crisis. In this respect I have always held that it is much better just to create the conditions that guarantee that when a child calls out "the king-is-naked", that child gets heard. In a letter to the Financial Times published in November 2004 I pleaded “Please, help us get some diversity of thinking to Basel urgently; at the moment it is just a mutual admiration club of firefighters trying to avoid bank crisis at any cost - even at the cost of growth.” In another letter that the Financial Times published in September 2006 I wrote “In my view the Fund's problem is that it has now turned into the clubhouse of the "independent" central bankers. What instead we need the IMF to do is to open up its executive board and diversify the recruitment of its staff so there is a better chance for the board to have a healthier perspective of what the IMF’s role should be.” To the above I would add that we also need a climate more favorable to open discussions, where risk adverse managers do not silence the dissent. Finally please remember that the most diversified organization in terms of countries can also be the most homogenous one... what we need is diversification in experiences and mindsets. And of course what goes for IMF goes for the Basel Committee too.