Laws creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and a federal deposit insurance and receivership framework, establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission, and greatly expanding the responsibilities and capabilities of the Federal Reserve System were very purposefully intended to help restore confidence in the U.S. financial system as a necessary condition to foster a recovery from the devastation of the Great Depression.
Nobel laureate Robert Shiller, a perceptive critic of the US financial system and its excesses, is nevertheless an advocate of greater use of financial engineering in improving the performance of the economy, notably by devising and making available better instruments for risk-pooling and risk-sharing.