Pendulum

The way I see it is certainly oversimplified, but it goes like this. In the 1930's there was financial chaos. We (the people and the government) learned some lessons. Safeguards (regulations) were put in place to make sure those problems could never happen again. Then, over the next 70 years, (actually beginning about 30 years ago) we forgot those lessons - a form of Alzheimers I suppose - and those safeguards were removed - one by one or two by two. Times were good. The effect of removing the safeguards seemed positive. Apparently no one remembered the old lessons. A few, actually, screamed into the deaf void that the long term result could be catastrophic, but no one heard. No one wanted to hear. So here we are again. Those who forget history are surely condemned to repeat it.
I'm tempted to digress into the engineering analogy to the operation of a closed system, but I won't. I will say this along those lines - in order for a system to remain stable there must be feedback (we call it negative feedback, but that's a good thing). Simply put, if the system runs too fast, slow it down. And vice versa. Works that way everywhere. If you don't have negative feedback your system is unstable - it will eventually either stop or go into wild oscillation. Enough engineering analogy already.
I'd be remiss if I left out this little tidbit. The above argument also applies to our activities, all of them, on this planet. I believe that, for the mostpart, we are running open-loop - no feedback. Why? Probably because it is easier and cheaper. But the result will eventually be an unstable system, in this case Earth, and it will not be pretty. The question is, will the intelligent species realize it BEFORE there are terrible lessons to be learned? There may not be a second chance to get it right.
I'm done. I could expand this into a book, but I'm sure someone already has. I hope it gets read!