The financial crisis. Who could have foreseen?

Byron Dorgan, that's who. From Rachael Maddow's show the other night comes an interview with Senator Byron Dorgan, replete with a thorough discussion of all his eerily accurate predictions as to the state of the economy and corporate bailouts if we were to deregulate and pass a whole host of other terrible laws. He was summarily ignored.

Here's the article he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly in 1994 that he mentions in the interview. Read it and try not to bang your head off the desk as he describes derivatives trading, banking, and financial markets in such accurately apocalyptic terms that you'd think he drives a time traveling DeLorean. I'm sure that the Senate, where the majority who was wrong is always quick to reward the minority who was right, will let 'ole Byron have a hand in drawing up new regulatory and oversight legislation.

Yeah, right. Well, at least he'll write a prescient article about the upcoming 2020 collapse. At least we'll have that.