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The Great Recession of 2008 and onward has drawn attention to the American economic and financial system and has cast a critical spotlight on the theories, policies, and assumptions of the modern, neoclassical school of law and economics--often labeled the "Chicago School"--because this school of legal economic thought has had great influence on the American economy and financial system. The Chicago School's positions on deregulation and the limitation or elimination of oversight and government restraints on stock markets, derivative markets, and other financial practices are the result of decades of neoclassical economic assumptions regarding the efficiency of unregulated markets, the nearreligious- like devotion to a hyper-simplified conception of rationality and self-interest with regard to the persons and institutions participating in the financial system, and a conception of laws and government policies as incentives and costs in a manner that excludes the actual conditions and complications of reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]