It's a little better now with people like Elizabeth Warren. The left still needs to understand finance better though or we'll all get totally screwed again come the next crisis.
The way to avoid the next crisis is to stop bailing out the players. The role of the Fed should be ensure that the payment system remains robust and that solvent banks have access to liquidity.
Lehman Brothers should be a model for the future. Barclays and Nomura bought productive the assets of Lehman and put them to work. The investors in Lehman's poor management were punished.
On the other hand, AIG/Goldman bailout earned Warren Buffet alone about $5 billion dollars. He literally was buying Goldman preferred stock while advising the Treasury to bailout AIG (whose biggest counterparty was GS).
If people get hungry, they revolt. The banks said to government, "If you don't bail us out, there will be a revolt. You don't want war in the streets do you?"
Solvent banks need liquidity, the payment system has to stay robust and functional, and existing deposit insurance (which is fully funded) needs to be honored. But don't bail them out.