Off-balance sheet entities, credit default swaps, derivative securities and bridge loans to nowhere--just a few of the unsound and unsafe culprits at the heart of the financial meltdown--but Bob McTeer, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and now a distinguished fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Texas, wants us all to stop treating Wall Streeters like villains and resolve this crisis.

Sorry, Bob, but steroidal manipulations of capital, if not illegal by definition, have unlawfully introduced some painful plugs up the collective arse. Naturally it's high time for laxatives--of which demonizing and villainizing those responsible are an indispensable part.

Sure, it's not just "Wall Streeters" who are culpable; there were buyers and sellers and market participants aplenty who crashed this party, as intoxicated and blinded by the paper storm as the Dionysians who used to frequent Studio 54 and inhale the cocaine reportedly fed into the club's air conditioning system. Count, too, American consumer folly, siphoning off billions in home equity to invest in TVs, vacations and other non- and negative-equity investments.

As a Washington DC lawyer told me several months ago, "the American economy is built on a falling house of credit cards, with mind-boggling consequences ahead."

Fail to demonize and villainize at the point of impact, though, and the hammer of true change then stands to strike on brittle iron. Hey presto, the accountability trail grows cold, our heads are whip-sawed by another distraction, and guess what, the rogues have wiggled free yet again.

One NY Times reader answered McTeer thus: "Free market ideologues in government, abetted and financed by contributions from the very enterprises you warn against 'demonizing' and the lobbyists they hired to thwart every attempt at independent oversight can not be so easily absolved."

Everything stops being real if high crime is not properly dealt with. Enough with the ideologues and wolf-criers, and hey people, watch out for that McCain guy, word has it that he's hooped up on Bill Romanowski's pep pills.

Jeff Heilman

10/2/08