Washington ? The pendulum of government regulation is swinging in a new direction.

The government spent most of the past three decades dismantling rules put in place to fix bad practices that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. President Barack Obama’s financial overhaul plan marks a clear step toward greater regulation.

The country often responds to crises with a raft of new laws and rules designed to keep whatever caused the crisis from happening again.

Washington is home to many large federal buildings that stand as monuments to past bursts of crisis-driven government intervention: the Commerce Department, Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Energy, and Homeland Security.

There’s always a risk of going too far on the regulation or deregulation side. And corrections in the opposite direction have been common. Either way, buildings full of federal workers remain.

“In theory, regulation and markets should evolve together. In fact, almost always, regulation comes after disasters” and it isn’t always for the better, said John Steele Gordon, an economic historian and author of the book “The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power.”

“Disasters teach us how to prevent the last disaster,” he said.