Governments all over the world were in a panic as their entire financial system teetered on the verge of collapse.
They all decided not to allow that to happen and took extreme measures. Whether this was the best path or whether it would have been better to let the whole structure fall over causing everyone a lot of pain is open for debate and depends on ones philosophy.
As they were all moving into uncharted waters it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can now look back and make any sort of judgement which is a bit unfair on those in power at the time as it was all a gamble to some extent.
