I would add that they also tend to not even learn the right lesson about the last war, so they're trying to fight the last war with weapons that also would have lost the last war.

Undisciplined

 learned from history and patched up some fighting-the-last-war sort of thing — only to be presented with an entirely different, unique, unprecedented black swan version of the same problem.

econ

The Three Ls in "Financial Bubbles" (Financial Times, Gillian Tett)

denlillaapan

True dat. 

According to central bankers, they've _always_ learned from history and patched up some fighting-the-last-war sort of thing — only to be presented with an entirely different, unique, unprecedented black swan version of the same problem. 

_boom_