Every crisis has its heroes: the economists who "correctly" forecast the crash.

Since there are a few economists who forecasts financial armageddon at any given time, the simple test whether the heroes of the last crash were lucky or omniscient is to see if they can repeat. 

Dr. Doom, the hero of the last crash is trying to step into the spotlight again (here).  Not to remind us that he predicted the current crisis, but to announce his book. Crisis Economics, "which covers not only the recent crisis, but also dozens of others throughout history and across both advanced economies and emerging markets – I show that financial crises are, instead, predictable “white swan” events." 

Aside from tall claims of prescience, the articles is a tour de force. It as an excellent working definition to identify a financial crisis:

"An event that forces policy officials to spend a long weekend trying desperately to announce a new bailout package in order to avoid national and global panic before the markets open on Monday. In the past years, such weekend all-nighters dealt with the needed bailouts of private firms – Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, AIG, bank rescues, etc."

and it reminds us of the scale of the "new normal" 

The scale of these bailouts is mushrooming. During the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, South Korea – a relatively large emerging-market economy – received what was then considered a very large IMF rescue package – $10 billion. But, after the rescues of Bear Sterns ($40 billion), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ($200 billion), AIG (up to $250 billion), the Troubled Asset Relief Program for banks ($700 billion), we now have the mother of all bailouts: the $1 trillion European Union-International Monetary Fund rescue of troubled eurozone members. A billion dollars used to be a lot of money; now one trillion is the “new normal”… Governments that bailed out private firms now are in need of bailouts themselves. But what happens when the political willingness of Germany and other disciplined creditors – many now in emerging markets – to fund such bailouts fizzles? Who will then bail out governments that bailed out private banks and financial institutions? Our global debt mechanics are looking increasingly like a Ponzi scheme.

Absent is, however, a simple, lucid analysis of what we can expect in the future as the Eurozone crisis unfolds. Paul Krugman and Milton Friedman provide that insight succinctly.