We admit to being a little disappointed with the financial press coverage of the sub-prime and structured credit problems. In our opinion, too much of it has been of the 20-20 hindsight variety—the “what part of packaging dodgy mortgages and calling them as AAA-rated financial instruments did Merrill Lynch or Citi or Bear Stearns not understand?” type of story.
Now don’t get us wrong; we’re not excusing the greed and myopia that banks and others exhibited by choosing to facilitate these products and by stuffing them into their portfolios. But some of these voices of rectitude could have been noting long ...