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I disagree, I think that the profit motive trumps prudence in the financial markets as they operate now. Because bank presidents have a short term focus, and risky investments pay more short term, they will keep making this mistake over and over again. The lesson of the meltdown will wear off in a few years.

  I've got a suggestion for avoiding future financial meltdowns like this one.  I think the root cause was people not understanding the new financial instruments that have been created, the fancy mortgages, and things like credit default swaps.  Any buyer of financial products ought to know what they are getting, but they didn't because the instruments were complicated, new, and designed to make a profit for investment banks and others.  I suggest that we cannot simply outlaw financial innovation, nor can we continue as we are with buyer beware taken to a crazy extreme. As a moderate middle ground let me propose that all new financial instruments be licensed.  Some regulatory agency would have to look closely at something like a credit default swap before it can be sold, and decide it is actually similar to an insurance policy, and ought to be taxed and regulated as such.  Perhaps there could be a disclosure requirement on all new financial instruments that boils down the expenses and the risk, much as there is for a traditional home mortgage.  Exotic mortgages ought to look risky to the average buyer, when they are risky, and prudent people will then avoid them.

Huge leverage should always be banned. It was big driver of the problem in 1929, and it is a big driver of the problem now. We cannot ever permit huge leverage in any financial instrument. This implies no mortgages with less than 5% down. We cannot ever again claim with a straight face that certain financial markets don’t need regulation and won’t ever get bailed out. Reality intrudes. People will always seek the profitable way, the exciting new (deregulated) thing, and that’s OK, so long as that creativity is prevented from tricking consumers and the market as a whole.