While the story is true to some degree that "We didn't care", I think it all ties back to government agencies that allow businesses to operate on a very risk tolerant threshold; More than the free market would have allowed.<p>Take for instance, the FDIC, which allowed banks to only hold some kind of ridiculous percentage, say 10%, of all demand deposits, and the fee the FDIC charged to "insure" banks holdings was very small. There is not an insurance company in the world that would allow anyone to lend out 90% of their money stock and insure it all for almost nothing.<p>The government sets up safety nets which <i>allow</i> people, who are inherently risk conscious, to stop caring about risk.