Fortunately, policymakers succeeded in dealing with the situation better than many had feared they would; unfortunately, we are still dealing with the consequences of the collapse and the steps necessary to deal with it.
Former Congressman Barney Frank has been heard to say that economists have a wonderful technique, that of the counterfactual, to analyze what has been achieved by preventing disasters, but that real people base their judgments more on the current state of the world than on disasters that have not happened.