You ' d have to be a bright eyed person to believe that many people within the industry didn ' t see this coming , and have a lot to do with it . There is a larger scheme at play , and this was just a part of their playbook . Possibly planned years ago . Many saw a crash coming there are a lot of minor and major crashes . not so many saw a full systemic crisis . They couldn ' t even predict Brexit . Remember , the investment banks are just a small part of the industry and most players had skin in the game e . g . mortgage backed securitiesHundreds of competing institutions didn ' t collectively conspire to shoot themselves in the footRegardless , how it was handled after is the real crime . Instead of these idiots bailing themselves out , they forced that responsibility onto a whole country that vastly had little to do with the issue . People were buying houses they couldn ' t afford . Everyone was to blame it ' s just that responsibility goes up , not down . Politicians had no problem letting Lehman fall , in fact they vetoed the first TARP bill . however when the crisis went systemic and threatened main street , the voters , me and you . then people got nervous and started to realise the true scale of the problemIt would have been nice to let the banks burn , but at the cost of destroying the economy ? it would have been madness