Regulation past and future

There's regulatory reform getting talked about now here and elsewhere, perhaps after the horse has bolted, and the Americans are lamenting somewhat about repealing the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 - something which took away an established barrier between commercial and speculative or investment banking.

If money is the oil in the engine of your economy, that oil is not supposed to be available to be burned by the engine even though theoretically it might get you a higher performance in the short run. Eventually you'll burn out the oil and could be left with cylinders welded to your chambers.... In some economies in this era they might not just have burned the oil but started to pour in the brake fluid, radiator coolant, window-washer water and power steering liquid (but at least we got to B from A). How can the damage of this be reversed if at all and what structures will be erected or be re-introduced to deal with the next inevitable round of abuse of real-estate bubble lunacy (possibly in the immediate time before 2080 as the last craziness happened in the US just before 1929)