One simple step firms can take is make sure that people that are getting paid a lot of money, say more than a million or two, that a big chunk of that money is deferred. That's going to change the whole ballgame.

Why tie to gold? Why not 1982 Bordeaux?

Recall that people like to do what most people think it is right to do; recall too that people like to do what most people actually do.

Maybe you'll take the cash out. So a credit card company or a bank that goes into the business of saying we're going to be the broker, we're going to sell you a mortgage that you're going to be able to pay off, we're going to help you reduce your credit card debt, we're going to help you save for retirement, we're going to put you into mutual funds that have low fees rather than high fees.

I think we also have learned the lesson that we have to have better incentive structures.

Retirement savings is probably behavioral economists' greatest success story. It is a prototypical behavioral-economics problem because saving for retirement is cognitively hard - figuring out how much to save - and requires self-control.

I think one lesson we have to learn is that there's a lot more risk than we're giving credit to, a lot more what economist calls systematic risk.