The End of Optimism

When I worked in Oslo my boss was a polar explorer (before hedge funds started doing it as team building), a collector of contemporary art and a book publisher. Whenever we raised concerns about forecasted book sales, he would always reply: "You have to be an optimist. I am an optimist, and things tend to work out." This might be true for the book industry (indeed, his company has grown to be one of the most profitable publishing houses in an otherwise regulated and sedated sector), but could the opposite be true for the financial industry?