Think of the current market and economic turmoil as a disaster by committee, with blunders by government officials, Wall Street pros, and regular Americans alike

By Ben Steverman and David Bogoslaw

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Christopher Cox, and Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency James Lockhart III. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Tune in to Anderson Cooper on CNN and watch as he counts down the "10 Most Wanted Culprits of the Collapse." Pick up the New York Post and read about FBI investigations of top financial firms under the headline "Fraud Street." With a bewildering and frightening financial crisis in full swing, the new national pastime is finding someone to blame.

As markets crash and retirement dreams fade away, media and the public are filled of outrage at everyone from mortgage brokers and Wall Street CEOs to real estate investors to experts who failed to prognosticate the emergency was future. Congress hauls the most prominent executives before tough committee hearings, while political candidates blame each other. Pundits proffer lists of the mustache-twirling villains who caused the whole thing.

Investigators will undoubtedly take the cover off fraud, cheating, and other criminal behavior. But for now, in that place is no shortage of players who stand accused of having a hand in the crisis. It just depends on where you think the landslide began or who gave it the biggest push.

If you blame loosened fiscal regulations, as luck may have it maker Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) or Securities & Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox are your men.

Think that a political push to boost homeownership handed too many people mortgages they couldn’t afford? Why not single exhausted Franklin Raines, former CEO of Fannie Mae?

Maybe you think the whole housing bubble could have been avoided with an interest rate greaten (Alan Greenspan, step right up). Or, that folks should in nay degree have signed up for no-doc, interest-only loans, no matter by what mode numerous silhouettes danced across their computer screen in a Web ad. In that case, the villain may be no further than your bathroom example.

(For a range through some of those people who are blamed for having a hand in the meltdown, go to our slide show.)

Of course, all of these people had something else in mind other than wrecking the U.S. economy. Some of them were making lots and lots of standard of value—notwithstanding themselves, of course, still also since their investors. Others truly believed in the virtue of freeing the marketplace’s animal spirits from the cold hand of government regulation. And for what cause many people were arguing over against the virtues of homeownership?

Just the fact that one can assemble such a long list of possible villains gives a suggestion as to how sundry institutions, officials, and regular Americans made mistakes. "It’s so difficult to pinpoint person person or two the public," says Georgetown University finance professor Reena Aggarwal. "It positively was the whole system."

Even Presidential candidates eager with regard to votes take acknowledged there’session no easy scapegoat. "Part of the reason this crisis occurred is that everyone was living beyond their means—from Wall Street to Washington to on the same level more on Main Street," Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said on Oct. 13.

Indeed, it was a concatenation of bad ideas, wonderful linkages, and all-too-predictable blunders that came side by side to emit the U.S. financial system, and at that time the unalloyed world plan, into a serious credit crunch and global stock alarm. That’sitting not to say that it couldn’t have been prevented.