It’s been a scary couple of days. I’d bet, given recent events in the markets, like many, you’d like to get to the bottom of what the heck is really going on here. Why does everything we try to fix this crisis seem not to work?

Let me recap my take of what’s happened over the past several years:

In 2006-7, the prevailing narrative discussed a never-ending boom thanks to hyperfinancialization. I suggested, instead: a historic, generational crisis — not just a crash, but a titanic reconfiguration of the global economy.

In 2008-9, the prevailing narrative switched between “Zomg what just happened?! What kind of banking crisis is this? Is this a liquidity crisis? Is this a solvency crisis?!” I suggested that it was none of the above — it’s an institutional crisis, hardwired into the DNA of our economic “rules of the game” (which, as they stand, fail to reward the creation of authentic, enduring, meaningful value, and so can’t generate real prosperity).

In 2009-10, when the prevailing narrative was “Ah, that was just a banking crisis — we’re going to recover next quarter!! Whoops, I mean — next quarter!! Whoops….” I argued: we’re in for a prolonged period of generalized stagnation (replete with toxic dynamics like mass unemployment, falling real incomes, wealth transfers, regulatory failures) — because we’re still in an institutional crisis, not out of a simple “banking crisis.”

Now the prevailing narrative is more or less: “Uhh, Bob…do you know what the daylights is going on here? Steve? Bill? Todd? Bueller?!! Anyone…?!! Heeeellp!!” The shouty talking heads still largely struggle to understand what this crisis even is.

But the market turmoil we’ve witnessed in the past few days might should not have been a surprise — and wasn’t — to those who have been paying attention. Less because of near-term political gridlock, and more because of real stagnation combined with the end of central bank life support for the markets.

Who has been paying attention? People like Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, Matt Stoller at the Roosevelt Institute, John Robb at Global Guerrillas, economists and management scholars and thinkers like Joe Stiglitz, Gary Hamel, John Hagel, Richard Florida, and Roger Martin, all of whom have centrally challenged the tenets of what you might call financial determinism — the idea that simply by hurling money at banks, corporations, or investors, this crisis will automagically self-correct — and have instead suggested: it’s fundamentally grounded in the institutions we use to (mis)manage the economy. They’re deeply broken, and throwing money at broken institutions doesn’t fix them — it does the very opposite: it entrenches them, shores them up, fortifies them against the future.

Hence, here are six lessons on crisis that help explain why we’re still in one:

When you don’t reinvent institutions at a time of systemic failure, the problems they’re creating don’t just magically disappear. When you prop up (read: bail out) the institutions causing the crisis, instead of reinventing them, the crisis will deepen. When dysfunctional institutions prop one another up, prosperity’s a house of cards. Crisis becomes stagnation. When propping up failed institutions has drained your resources, you’ve turned a crisis into a catastrophe. The longer it takes you to see a crisis for what it truly is, the disproportionately worse it’s likely to get. When people who are prisoners of the paradigm that caused the crisis are in charge of fixing it, bet on…more crisis.

This crisis — like many historic crises — isn’t likely to vanish, like a mirage in the desert, just because we soldier on. Rather, it will take deep-seated institutional reinvention and transformation (before you ask me “how?!”, check out my book, or read back through this blog). If we don’t get serious about it soon, well, my hunch is: this pretty much is the shape of the future. Hence, the final lesson just might be: fail to heed lessons 1-6 for long enough and you’re on the Express Train to the Federation of Banana Republics. If we don’t, my guess: today’s market turmoil is probably just the pregame for the main event.