irony.

Must have been the Mac he used in school.

Get it? Only graphic designers and schools use Apple computers?

I missed the memo, when did /. become digg/reddit?

Or is it just that /. has become the new, oldmedia?

I could probably make a long post refuting all sorts of dogmatic blame statements made in this thread from one side of the political spectrum or the other with various forms of mildly informative evidence. Fact is there is plenty of blame to go around.

Models - That didn't account for data reliability (the frequentist/objectivist problem)

"Risk Management" - Modern approaches to risk management are naive in their requirements of what creates "risk" and what risk factors are most important to measure.

Decision Makers & Traders - The models weren't non-informative, but decision makers who decided to accept risk are motivated by short-term results, and didn't really seek information about the CDO's.

Regulators - Cox & the SEC allowed "creative" risk taking. Greenspan screwed up. Congress screwed up.

Consumers - Being duped by the "there is no bubble" nonsense spouted by mortgage givers.

Like all significant events, there is rarely one "big" cause, there are many causes (long-tail events are driven by multiple factors, not simple causes). And we simply don't have enough information to create wisdom concerning the situation at this point. Anyone to be dogmatic about a specific "why" is simply a fool.

Google can handle these conversions just fine... I've been using it all night to go the *other* way. :)