Lost opportunity

I've just started Simon Johnson & James Kwak's Thirteen Bankers. The brief period in 2008-2009 when the U.S. government could have broken the plutocrats' grip on the U.S. economy as part of the rescue reminds me of nothing so much as the moment at the end of the Second Age in the Lord of the Rings when Isildur fails to throw the Ring into Mount Doom. But I am less optimistic than Tolkien that the lost opportunity will ever be made good.