The financial system is very efficient, and allows tuning and scaling to an extent never before possible. That allows folks to squeeze pennies or build leveraged business models that previously would have not been possible.

Which is great, when things fit the model (the stocks or bonds involved pay retirees longer, make people wealthier, etc), but also allow people to build much higher castles of cards than they previously could have before something toppled them over.

Panics, crashes, defaulting on debt, etc. have been around as long (and probably longer) than we have historical records, but wow does the modern system take the cake for scale!