In the spirit of March Madness, The Motley Fool decided to have some fun creating a “Blame Bracket” to determine who is most responsible for the economic madness we’ve all been experiencing over the past year. While the “committee” did an admirable job selecting the field, there were surely a few disappointed “teams” left out of the dance (short sellers and the Nixon administration for canceling the Bretton Woods system come to mind). Nevertheless, the tourney got underway without any monumental upsets in the first round including Wall Street sailing past Main Street and the SEC outlasting Fannie and Freddie. Now down to the Elite Eight and with the clock striking midnight on the Cinderallas, the remaining heavyweights will battle it out for the right to wear the recession’s crown. Here are the predictions:
Elite Eight contests: The Media over Bernie Madoff, Repealers of the Glass-Steagall Act over Inventors of Derivatives, the SEC over Congress, and Wall Street over Geeks Bearing Formulas
Final Four: Wall Street over The Media and the SEC over Repealers of the Glass-Steagall Act
Champion: Wall Street over the SEC
So, there you have it. At the end of the day, it was Wall Street who over-leveraged, Wall Street who blindly used derivatives and relied on quantitative models without understanding the risks involved, Wall Street CEOs who misled the media on the financial health of their companies, and Wall Street who used its political influence to limit the regulatory power of the SEC.
