The assets were always risky, way before the panic set in.

I recommend the books After the Music Stopped or The Big Short for background on the crisis. (Also the movie The Big Short is excellent).

If the government's strategy was so risky, then why did it make money? The government wasn't gambling that there wouldn't be a crisis -- they intervened right in the middle of the crisis.

(I should have said became riskier, though. Of course the assets had some risk.)