The Ongoing Impact of the Housing Sector

John Mauldin is away this week, and so I contributed to his Outside The Box series in a post called "The Ongoing Impact of the Housing Sector."

The fun part of writing that was assigning blame for all of the problems in the credit market. As it turns out, only a few people are actually responsible:

Federal Reserve (FOMC)

Borrowers

Mortgage brokers

Appraisers

Federal Government

Fannie Mae (FNM)

Lending banks

Wall Street firms

CDO Managers

Credit agencies

Hedge funds

Institutional Investors (pensions, insurance firms, banks, etc.)

And back to regulatory role of the Federal Reserve

Other than those few groups, I don't know who else deserves the blame . . . ; )