'The proper thing to do is let the financial system self-regulate' - What are you kidding me? Just six years ago, a lack of enforced rules - in other words, lax

'The proper thing to do is let the financial system self-regulate' - What are you kidding me? Just six years ago, a lack of enforced rules - in other words, lax regulation - and a complete lack of regulation of derivatives led to a runaway housing bubble that practically destroyed the entire economy, killed thousands of people (through suicide/inability to afford medical bills) and lost 8.2 million people their homes. You can't let something which has all of our welfares wrapped up in it hinge on the momentary greed of a few people who have every incentive to take short cuts to greater success. If this "creative destruction" is acceptable to you, then I guess we have vastly different views of acceptability. Markets are great at solving lots of problems but they have blind spots. And one of them is the welfare of the people who are systemically connected, but not directly participating in the market. Human beings are not perfectly rational, and so neither are the markets that they make up. Until humans and markets are perfectly rational, we will need regulation to prevent gratuitous human suffering. And if like most economic libertarians you're going to come back at with me with the absurd "It was too much regulation, not too little" argument (which I assume you will), we have very little to discuss.