I’ve never heard a simpler statement of the fundamental Achilles’ heel of modern finance: “various forms of promises”

The system has become so intertwined that when someone breaks a promise, it’s too disruptive to actually hold them to account so we just paper over it to keep the wheels of commerce rolling.

Which is a form of hostage negotiation. Promise breakers are incentivized to profit as much as possible from broken promises as long as they can hold the system as a whole hostage.