Heads up: This post is 17 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
Columnist Paul Krugman joined other commentators in calling for a return to “boring banking” - code for when the industry was tightly regulated, US household debt was low, and Ivy League geniuses really did go into rocket science, engineering or tech, rather than inventing arcane financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations.