I’m also well aware that incentives to take excessive risk remain at the heart of Wall Street. The Dodd-Frank financial reforms contain some useful measures but do too little to significantly alter the balance of power between global megabanks and the rest of us. The Federal Reserve seems to be edging in the right direction on regulation but it is moving too slowly to make any difference for the next cycle.

And the U.S. is now entering perhaps the most dangerous phase of its long-standing tax revolt, in which Republicans insist on holding down federal revenue while the population is aging, but they won’t propose specific cuts in social programs, precisely because they know that Medicare and Social Security remain immensely popular.

As a result, the political logic of the moment leads to continued increases in U.S. government borrowing, about half of which is financed, for now, by international savings at low interest rates. Our post-crisis monetary policy is contriving to keep those rates very low for a long time, presumably setting the table for a further round of mismanaged risk taking in the financial sector (just as it did after 2001).