But I'm reminded of how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, rules were put in place to prevent investment banks from being the same institution as deposit-taking banks, so that bad investments couldn't destroy depositors' money. But time passed, and that whole generation died off, and nothing like the Great Depression happened again, and people forgot why the rules were there, and relaxed or removed them, and we got 2008.
People will remember 2008. They'll remember the sick feeling of fear, wondering if tomorrow (literally the next day) everything would collapse. But the time will come when the people who lived through it are gone, and the people who follow won't remember why the regulations and changes were needed. They may know intellectually, but they won't know at the gut level of having lived through it. And so the guardrails will eventually be removed. And then...
But this isn't that. This is just another dip in the business cycle.
2008 came very close to ending very, very badly. It wasn't "will I get laid off, and if I do, will I lose my house". 2008 was "will a number of the largest banks in the world fail, overwhelm the FDIC, and take everything else with them".
This feels like the middle, but I could be wrong. It could be just a flat spot on the way down.