NEW YORK CITY—In his most recent post, Ethan Penner looks at the human need for certainty, finding it lacking and implicating it in such failures as the inadequacy of agencies' math models during 2007 and 2008 to the lukewarm response in the ensuing fallout.

Penner writes:

"Another prime example of us seeking certainty is when we invest our trust in leadership, assuming they will get it all right and thus taking us off the hook for worrying about or handling things ourselves. Back in 2007/8, we believed, quite mistakenly, when Wall Street CEOs and our Fed Chairman and Secretary of Treasury, and President all told us that the impending housing finance crisis would be short-lived and would not really impact the broader economy too much....[We] continue to believe in modern day Peter Pans, rather than accept that the world is fraught with uncertainty and that we need to contend with it head on."