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There is a basic lesson on financial crises that governments tend to wait too long, underestimate the risks, want to do too little. And it ultimately gets away from them, and they end up spending more money, causing much more damage to the economy.

Financial crises are like fireworks: they illuminate the sky even as they go pop.

Financial crises require governments.

Not every business cycle has a financial crisis. Frequently they do.

Debt, we've learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains - pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies - but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage.

On Wall Street, financial crisis destroys jobs. Here in Washington, it creates them. The rest is just details.

This crisis is not simply a more severe version of the usual business cycle recession, the typical downturn in which economies ultimately adjust and stabilize.

Believing that a crisis is a useful thing to create, the Obama administration - which understands that, for liberalism, worse is better - has deliberately aggravated the fiscal shambles that the Great Recession accelerated.

Financial crises are an unfortunate but necessary consequence of modern capitalism.

We have major fiscal problems on our hand.