lessons learnt?

The US is the single most important thing in most things. When it comes to global finance, this is largely true (China, India, Germany, Japan are important, but not on a par with the US although China may get pretty close pretty soon).
Ben Bernanke is up for re-election, and there are fears that lessons haven't been learnt, meaning the bubble that caused all our problems will be left un-addressed. That's bad, means the lessons have not been learnt and we'll be here again before long.
Still, that's the inevitable cycle of capitalism