You said — “That said, they’re only part of an impersonal system currently in meltdown mode. If that system goes into failure mode, I promise you, what replaces it will be a lot more brutal than some Wall Street moron.”
It is already in failure mode. The old system is done for. A different and new financial system will come out of it and it will be a decade or more before things get back to any semblance of order and people even start to begin thinking about recovery...
I don’t believe it’s completely failed. The markets are still functioning reasonably well, though not to anyone’s satisfaction. We’ve only seen a couple runs on the banks, including “electronic runs.” People are still going to work in the financial centers of the world, a lot of them trying to untangle the mess. And, for the most part, people are remaining relatively calm. That’s all good news.
The bad news — as you said — the old system is over. And we have to navigate some perilous waters to put a new system in place.
....also, I fully expect whatever solution is presented to be argued, debated, and passionately defended and denounced, in the best of American traditions.