Here's an experiment

Imagine what the world would look like if their hadn't been a financial crisis? If either lenders hand been more responsible or regulators had halted the non-sense in mortgage lending. Even if it all resulted in a vanilla recession, the world would still look far different.

I'd put forward that Canada is a pretty good example of what would have happened. The recession in Canada was light and the economy quickly recovered.

More importantly, there was no real social change. The Conservative government was re-elected, the banking system was totally fine and people still have about the same levels of trust in institutions and politicians. There hasn't been any signs of radicalism in any sense getting real traction. There have been some issues and challenges but it's all been relatively boring and traditional.

Elsewhere, here's what I'm pretty sure of: Donald Trump isn't President. Without a financial crisis you don't get a Trump, you don't get a Brexit, you don't get a whole bunch of the cast of characters who emerged. Still, Donald Trump is probably the closest thing we have to a manifestation of the crisis.

But what's most striking about that realization is this. Donald Trump's signature achievement so far is undoubtedly tax reform and everything that came with it.

Who wrote that? Gary Cohn. The same Gary Cohn who was co-COO of Goldman Sachs during the crisis. There he pushed a complete scam that hid Greece's debts and had a hand in everything that went wrong in the mortgage market as co-head of the global securities business.

In another world he'd be in handcuffs yet here we are 10 years after the crisis and popular anger is still percolating and Gary Cohn is rewriting the rules to enrich his Wall Street friends.

The financial services industry engineered a complete takeover of the economy; blew the entire thing up and managed to take it over again. It's absolutely crazy but as an investor you have to play the hand you're dealt and right now Wall Street has all the cards.