Credit crisis: The blame, the bailout and the ball

October 18 2007 MarketWatch.com Today's credit crisis has the feel of kids playing football in the house. Everyone is having a good time until the ball goes through the window. It almost doesn't matter who threw the ball -- Citigroup Inc., subprime mortgage borrowers or lenders, big banks, the leveraged-buyout guys, ratings agencies -- everyone was doing something they shouldn't have. What's interesting is how all of the players are reacting. Some, such as Northern Trust Corp. and other banks, who don't have these bad debts on the books, are pretending they don't need to clean it up. These are the kids who say, "I wasn't there and I didn't do it." Others, such as Citigroup , Bank of America Corp. and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who may have left Goldman Sachs but still seems to live on Wall Street, are hell-bent on fixing the window. These are the kids who think they can cover up the damage.

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