All my replies have been in response to your "Blaming the banks who sold these seems totally crazy to me. " remark. I'm afraid I don't find it crazy. I think t

All my replies have been in response to your "Blaming the banks who sold these seems totally crazy to me. " remark. I'm afraid I don't find it crazy. I think they deserve an enormous amount of the blame (as I hope I illustrated in my earlier replies) and frankly, I find it vaguely irritating that anyone would try to defend their actions with arguments revolving around caveat emptor. This by no means suggests I believe they are solely responsible. On this, we can both agree. As far as I'm concerned, the ratings agencies, regulators (pre-crisis at least), brokers, press and government also deserve a large amount of the blame. Irresponsible consumers don't get let off the hook either. However, regulators (at least on the European side of the Atlantic), government in general and consumers have spent the last 5 years learning from their mistakes and are at least making efforts to correct the situation. The big banks on the other hand have continued to take the piss virtually un-fazed. I'm hoping the LIBOR scandal will now be their watergate moment. Edit: and when I say "virtually un-fazed" that's charitable. Active denial would be a better choice of phrase. They have heavily lobbied against every single banking sector reform proposed since the crisis began. That takes some hubris. I mean christ, in London up until fairly recently the banks were effectively resorting to blackmail: "make these reforms and we'll have to quit the city and move our operations to a more 'enlightened' jurisdiction".