Pointing the Finger

This week lots of fingers were pointed at the rating agencies. Many investors castigated the credit assessment firms, which made lots of money reviewing and grading bonds tied to these risky home loans, for being late with warnings on these securities.

Two weeks before, Wall Street firms were the culprits -- for buying these risky securities and then making them into multitiered credit cakes with a punch and selling them to funds and investors.

And earlier in the year, it was greedy home loan brokers and lenders, and naive or desperate consumers looking to buy a home with risky loans who were the instigators of the subprime crisis.

The turmoil in the U.S. home loan market was triggered by tens of thousands of home loans going bad. These loans, known as subprime, were offered during the housing boom to borrowers with slim or shaky credit histories. As the loans began to default, the impact roiled a slumping housing sector, banks, homeowners, markets investors and the economy.

The tale of woe that has evolved in the risky housing loan sector has a cast of characters and a number of chapters and reads like an epic encompassing struggling homeowners, Wall Street mavens and a few of the Seven Deadly Sins.

"Frankly it's the greed factor all over again," said Bill Featherston, a managing director at broker-dealer J. Giordano Securities Group, which is based in Stamford, Connecticut.

WHERE TO BEGIN

Lawyers are sharpening litigation knives and politicians are calling for reforms, investigations and someone to blame.

But it is unclear who will ultimately pay.