observation on the economy

Below is a list of every major American panic (recession or economic collapse in modern parlance) in the 18th and 19th centuries. See if you notice a pattern.

Panic of 1796: Lack of regulation led to the bursting of the land bubble in 1796, causing a financial crash. The crash soon escalated into a depression that caused economic hardship in both America and Britain.
Panic of 1819: Unregulated overspeculation in Western lands led to economic collapse and depression.
Panic of 1837: Caused by overspeculation in Western lands by unregulated "wildcat" banks. Western expansion briefly stopped because millions lost their wealth, and millions in government funds were lost when several hundred banks collapsed.
Panic of 1857: Too much grain production, overspeculation in land and railroads, and inflation caused by inpouring California gold caused a major economic crisis that is widely considered to be the first international economic collapse, since it was felt throughout all of Europe and in America.
Panic of 1873: More railroads were built than were necessary, causing many railroad financiers to go bankrupt on their railroad investments. Further, lack of regulation in the gold markets allowed Jay Gould and James Fisk to acquire almost all of the market by bribing government officials. When Gould and Fisk began to pull their money out of gold because of a miscommunication, the market collapsed. This panic was so severe that it was known as the Great Depression until the actual Great Depression of the 1930s.
Panic of 1893: Unregulated overspeculation and overbuilding in railroads caused the railroad bubble to burst. This is identical to the cause of the Panic of 1873. This was the most severe depression of the 19th century, with millions losing their jobs.

If you don't see it, here's the pattern that I get from this data: every American economic crisis and depression of the 18th and 19th was caused by unregulated speculation, followed by that speculative bubble bursting catastrophically. Usually, the culprit was overspeculation in land (i.e. real estate), or in the last 20 years of the 1800s, railroads. So opponents of regulation may want to read up on their history, because under-regulation has a tendency to cause massive economic collapses every two decades or so.