And the reason for that is that it was government policy that created the situation in the first place: wanting everyone to own a home, whether they could afford it or not, and allowing banks to play games to offset the inevitable losses from being forced to give mortgages to people who couldn't afford them. And it was government policy that called a lot of the shots once things started to go south: they were telling banks who had to merge with who, who had to declare bankruptcy, etc.

I'm not saying the banks aren't culpable: they took risks with money that wasn't theirs to risk, it was their depositors'. But the government is culpable too.