The purpose of this article is to take a 30,000-feet high perspective and zoom to ground level before making a diagnosis. Seen from such a high level system-wide and historical vantage point, the 2007–09 global financial crisis (GFC) was essentially a crisis stemming from over-consumption financed by over-leverage. My simplistic analysis is that the GFC was the result of cognitive capture by free market ideology that led to lax monetary and fiscal policies and gross under-supervision of finance