"The prime example is the Federal Reserve’s pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages, which it could have done by setting prudent mortgage-lending standards. The Federal Reserve was the one entity empowered to do so and it did not."
Ah, but the crisis would have happened in the absence of the Federal reserve. In fact, one could easily argue that the Fed was lobbied heavily, HEAVILY to do less by external forces and those forces succeeded. You cannot come to the conclusion that a lack of a Fed would have made markets more stable.
Without a centralised monetary authority you lose an important tool to manage a crash.