I'm not normally a big fan of finger pointing. It generally seems more important to me to solve the problem. But I'm troubled that I'm not seeing much personal accountability in this whole mortgage market mess.

Sure, we've seen plenty of mortgage companies go belly up. And there are no doubt more to come.

But there were individuals pushing these mortgages, often with encouragement or even direction to do so from the top. There were clearly many instances of out right fraud with lenders deliberately misleading borrowers about the terms and conditions of the loans they were getting.

And, yes, the consumer is responsible for reading the fine print and knowing what they were signing. And many of them are going to suffer serious consequences for their failures there. But what about the lenders who led them down the garden path? I'm not hearing any stories about individuals being fired for what they did. I'm not hearing about government investigations and charges being filed. Strangely enough, I'm not even hearing about law suits being filed. (How unAmerican!)

Maybe it's too early in the cycle yet. Maybe all that will still show up some months down the road as this mess plays itself out.

Personally, I'm hoping some of these guys get run out of town on a rail and are never heard from again! Maybe real estate and mortgage company offices ought to have a bulletin board of bad guys like they do at the post office?