The reins weren't taken off just for the sake of doing so. People at the very top wanted to institute a massive regime of moneyprinting a.k.a. stimulus a.k.a. rampant inflation. The hosing of trillions of dollars into the world cannot be done so prudently or wisely. It means that people who would not and could not take on extremely high levels of debt must be encouraged and allowed to do so. They would not be allowed to take on so much under the previous rules. So the rules had to go.
If you watched the movie The Big Short it seemed to hammer on the theme of, look they deregulated, banks lost their minds and here we are. That's only partly true. The movie almost completely ignored the role of inflation instituted at the level of the Federal Reserve and other major central banks around the world, as being the reason for the urgent need to deregulate. Except for one tiny and significantly obtuse quote in the voice-over near the end of the movie which I quote from memory: " ... the chairman of the Federal Reserve who was the practically the architect of the whole bubble ... "
That's a bit off topic, but I think it's important for understanding Iger's behavior to first understand why the stock market is so lousy, why ordinary, prudent investments are so risky, and why shareholders are so recklessly focused on extremely short-term gains at the expense of the long term health of companies' fundamental brick-and-mortar assets.
