Evidence from the US mortgages before the Financial Crisis doesn't seem to support this. Middle managers at Countrywide (etc.) played even more games with their

Evidence from the US mortgages before the Financial Crisis doesn't seem to support this. Middle managers at Countrywide (etc.) played even more games with their mortgages than normal people, interest-only up the wazoo etc. to get themselves into even nicer houses than they could afford, because they thought that they understood how the mortgage system worked. The problem is that old line from Upton Sinclair about how it was "difficult get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." The engineers, investment people, mortgage people etc. are motivated to believe that what they are doing is sufficient. This is supposed to be why disinterested government regulators- people whose pay does not change on whether this building, investment, submarine, mortgage etc. is safe- jump in and actually approve things. But, of course, government regulators are silly and just slow things down, because they don't understand how our new system uses computers/crypto/AI/whatever to be just as safe.