Too young to understand what happened in the 2008 GFC but I doubt the 'feeling prepared' part works like this. First of all, the recessions tend to last longer than most people expect/plan for. Statistically, it will turn out their 'secure' jobs will be less 'secure' than expected. Meanwhile their emergency funds will start shrinking (slowly at first, then all at once) due to loss of purchasing power & eventual job loss.

However, I'm optimistic on the long term because I think only recessions can correct the (massive) mis-allocation of capital that we experienced the past decade due to ultra-low interest rates.

I believe the Olympics every four years are more important for humanity than the existence of NASA. I also think we could be doing the Olympics for cheaper than ~$20b every four years.

We're not leaving this planet for a long time yet. Even if we do, it's not desirable to abandon Earth, it's vastly superior to all other practical options we have. We're going to have to continue to try to co-exist and avoid any further world wars. $4b or $5b per year for a large gathering of the sort the Olympics represents, is dirt cheap if it lends even a tiny boost to global peace between nations.

Keeping in mind this isn't actually an either or situation. It's obviously not either NASA's budget, or putting on the Olympics at a $20b cost. We - humanity - can in fact afford to do both.

I'd vote for reducing NASA's annual budget by 19% (~$4b per year) to pay for the Olympics, if that was the only option. That's a very easy decision.

It's one of the few things that most of humanity does together. Over a billion people watch some part of the Olympics globally. It's a modest, important pillar of peaceful co-existence between nations and peoples broadly. We shoud do more things together in that spirit. Maintaining peace between the 195 nations is more important than NASA's continued operation, by several orders of magnitude.

For another example, the UN is also more important than NASA (the UN has a core budget comparable to an annualized cost of the Olympics). I'm not much of a fan of the UN, and I still recognize that it serves an important purpose of promoting cooperation and discussion between nations and would be almost entirely impossible to replace today.

Competitive sport is critically important to humanity and arguably always has been in some form or another. Sometimes people that don't love sport generally, entirely fail to understand what it accomplishes and how important it is.

If NASA goes away (and yes, it would obviously be a huge loss), a dozen other countries will continue with various space efforts. How many things do that many nations cooperate together on in an overwhelmingly positive spirit other than the Olympics?

I think its important to note that they didn't end up this way because they were stupid or power hungry.

Like alot of companies, they made decisions that made sense at the time that ended up having poor long term consequences.

When they decided to really grow it was due to a couple of things..

1) Their competitors were all doing the same thing and they almost needed to grow their investment arm and international presence just to stay in business.

It used to be that Audi, Porchse etc would come to them for basic loans etc and business was good. But as these firms grew internationally they also needed a bank that did the same.

Audi sells in Brazil it needs a bank with a presence there as well. And along comes the big american and European banks who start selling themselves to Deutsche's current clients as a one stop shop who can do what Deutsche does but also all these new things that international modern companies need.

A company needs to get a currency or interest rate swap, well Goldman Sachs can do that, so Deutsche followed suit.

From this perspective its easy to see how they started down the road they did.

And once you start building out a international team of investment bankers and traders that means you're now competing for talent with the rest of the big players.

So how do you hire the best traders/investment bankers?

You pay them like everyone else does, which is to say you have to pay them..... alot.

You have to provide perks like New York/London/Tokyo offices and the ability to trade the hottest products and markets.

You need to let your traders make money like other firms do or they'll just leave for those other firms.

All just to keep your existing clients.

And before long you are just like everyone else.

Then in the mid 2000's during a huge bull market you have one of wall streets stars Boaz Weinstien (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaz_Weinstein or read "The Quants") running your derivatives desk. And they made money hand over fist..... at the time.

Now the funny thing about bull markets, is that even bad trades can make money during them because everything is up and to the right.

And even if you think you are putting on too much exposure, tough, remember that so is everyone else and if you stop, then the good traders and bankers quit and go to competitors who will let them make money.

It's sort of like raising money as a startup in frothy markets. You'd just better raise money because if you don't and all your competitors raise 20 million then even if you're better they'll often win because they can survive longer than you.

It just happens that Deutsche didn't quite understand the game that was eing played, and when the music stopped, they were holding the bag so to speak.