We already knew that lax mortgage approval processes contributed to the global economic meltdown. With the benefit of hindsight, lenders say they probably should have looked up “mortgage” in a thicker dictionary and asked new employees if they knew how to use a calculator.

In their own defense, lenders noted that customers came to them asking for money. “Hey, they didn’t have to walk in here,” one said defiantly. “Tryouts for ‘Wheel of Fortune’ were going on right down the street.” Another talked to us about the pride and satisfaction that comes with providing the wherewithal to make a business grow or move a family into a fine home. Then he tried to loan us $10,000 to feed the parking meter.

So let’s hope we have all learned from the experience. For example, the Obama administration rammed through a tough new requirement that when a guy wants to borrow several hundred thousand dollars, but he’s wearing his NASCAR T-shirt inside-out, the loan officer must ask to see his tax returns or something.

We may have more learning to do, because now it has come to light that these same institutions may have gone too rapidly in the other direction. In a practice known as “robosigning,” some financial officers signed as many as 400 foreclosures per day, pausing only to stretch their fingers or work on their Tea Party placards.

Documents flew across America’s desks. It was inevitable that mistakes would be made.

Rather than dwell on the negative, as journalists are often accused of doing, we should point out that in most cases the foreclosure papers were neatly stapled.

Still, a small number of foreclosures may have been approved because the lender was just trying to see if her pen still had ink. At least one officer pulled the plug on a million-dollar deal when he thought he was filling out a subscription order for Field & Stream. A flood of foreclosures in Florida apparently can be traced to “Take Your Child to Work Day.”

In very rare instances, pawprints have been found on the forms, so family pets may have been involved. However, these generally involved homes worth less than $500,000, so investigators are inclined to let them slide rather than revisiting the landmark case of United States v. Schnookie the Schnauzer.

This sort of financial mayhem is becoming all too familiar to Americans. The recklessness brings to mind the era of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, in which, if I remember correctly, shockingly expensive shower curtains were sold to Californians during rolling brownouts.

Actually, when you spell it out like that, it’s kind of hard to understand why this was considered scandalous. But it seemed pretty bad at the time.

A few years before that, we suffered through the dot-com collapse. The sharpest minds in the country convinced investors that everything could be done much better online, combining convenience with easy profits.

Web-based firms were created around everything from gardening to music to fashion, and their stock prices soared. At the peak of the mania, gifted young entrepreneurs were working on a plan to deliver sliced ham via fax machines.

Unfortunately, it was another case of dashed hopes, as most of these Internet schemes lacked various basic elements of a solid business plan, such as “having stuff to sell.”

At that point, venture capitalists lost faith and moved on to the next big things: building ethanol plants in Iowa and, eventually, fixing National Basketball Association games.

This sad, endless parade of broken promises might make you wonder whether you, as an American citizen, can trust any of our institutions anymore. All we can say is:

You’re just now starting to wonder?