I just finished reading Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation. It didn't even get to the 2008 GFC, but it covered many other bubbles. The

I just finished reading Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation. It didn't even get to the 2008 GFC, but it covered many other bubbles. The market almost always uses the government to inflate their bubbles by giving stock to officials and other various schemes. The answer isn't to not have a government, it's even tighter regulation (which, since that requires the existing batch of officials to make less money on speculation themselves, is difficult to pull off).