In response to an FT article by Randall Kroszner on 30th July 2015, entitled 'A shipping disaster's lessons for Dodd-Frank'
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ca05faa-353c-11e5-bdbb-35e55cbae175.html#ixzz3hQ3K0tQC
The most useful part of Dodd Frank was neutered just before Christmas when an amendment was added to the budget that effectively put the FDIC back on the hook for derivative losses. I.E. Moral Hazard was reinstated in law. The legislation was cut and paste from a piece written by Citi and JPM spent a week on the phone lobbying Congressmen keen to get home for Christmas.
Dodd Frank now exists, poor impotent creature of 2300 pages that it is...because the mere 37 pages of Glass-Steagall doesn't. The latter was scrapped courtesy of Messrs Clinton, Rubin and Summers, none of whom seem to know much about markets or human nature. What they do seem to understand however, is Beltway politics. And as Beltway politicians they have built careers on their ability to avoid any personal accountability for poor decisions, ignore moral hazard as the cost of doing business, and speak out of both sides of their mouths at the same time.
Using your analogy, we need boats designed by people who understand what a safe ship looks like, how to sail one, and how passengers will react in a crisis. It would also be a good idea if the landlubbers who took away a set of simple rules that prevented banks from being casinos, weren't still pontificating on maritime matters several years after their particular Titanic went down.