The Great Recession is a rolling disaster that the world economy seemingly stumbled into in the spring of 2008 and continues most colorfully today with the slow motion train wrecks of monetary policy in the United States and the collapsing Euro. This rolling economic Verdun was born many years before in a series of ill-conceived and poorly understood policy initiatives championed by consumer advocates and industry groups alike. These reforms – generally characterized as deregulation – were targeted at the seemingly laudable targets of risk mitigation and fairness, and categorically achieved just the opposite.