No, they were greedy. They were going to lose it one way or another, either through inflation or through asset depreciation. There was no way around it. Going to a riskier asset doesn't help because all assets have the same interest-rate risk embedded. They just took on more risk in addition to that.

Real rates were negative for 10+ years (and still are on the short end!). That's everyone paying for trillions of dollars of wars, speculation and bad investments. The bill has to be paid.

But as mentioned, none of this applies to intermediaries like banks. They aren't forced to take on any risk.