摘要：Let me start with praise for the paper and also introduce the structure of my comments. The paper by Misina and Tkacz is part of recent, broader literature investigating how asset prices and other financial variables can help document and predict financial stress and financial distress. Clearly, since we have faced the largest financial crisis in advanced countries since the Great Depression, nobody needs to be reminded how important this type of research is. It would have been extremely useful for policymakers to have an objective tool on the basis of which they could have anticipated at least some of the turmoil over the past year. This would also have been helpful for private market participants, since that could have provided a check on the excessive risk taking that went on in many financial markets.
