Generically, "freedom" is a good, but we're not truly so brainwashed as a populace that you could have created a political narrative for deregulation that relied on the notion that the poor bankers' constitutional right to lend money any way they wanted to were being infringed...
Rather, the basic argument for "deregulation" was that regulations were getting in the way of "financial innovation" that would make the markets "more productive" and "more efficient." And thus we'd all get richer.
I see those riches being bought at the price of increased fragility.
But if you're arguing that deregulation was the road to efficiency and therefore fragility, that is slightly different.
I think there may be both. Hyper-leverage and oblivion to risk seem to me to come more under the heading "excess" than "efficiency", unless efficiency is solely defined as capturing the most wealth fastest.
