"The biggest mistake Obama could make is thinking this problem is smaller than it is."

"On the other hand, there is far less danger in overestimating what will be necessary to solve it."

So asserts Yale finance professor Jeffrey Garten, quoted at the end of today's Thomas Friedman column.

Is this some general rule or profound truth that we need to understand? When you don't know the extent of a problem, overestimate it? Does that apply to everything or just finance or just the the current financial situation? I'm worried that this insistence on overestimation will be used to justify foisting a giant liberal wish list on us. I'm thinking of that Rahm Emanuel line Rush Limbaugh was playing for us all last week:

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity. What used to be long-term problems -- be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area -- things that we had postponed for too long that were long-term are now immediate and must be dealt with. And this crisis provides the opportunity for us, as I would say, the opportunity to do things that you could not do before.

So I think I'm going to take the less dangerous approach of overestimating what these people are planning to do to us. Don't want make the big mistake of thinking it's smaller than it is, right?