Adam Davidson at Planet Money recently asked, “Who Do We Blame?” Which, I think, is a perfectly legitimate question. While the most important things are getting ourselves out of this crisis and reducing the chances of another one happening, asking who is at fault for this one is a reasonable exercise, for at least two reasons: first, it responds to our basic human curiosity; second, since many of the parties involved care only about their reputations (Bush, Clinton, Greenspan, Paulson, etc. have enough money for several lifetimes), going after people’s reputations is one of the few ways to create some measure of accountability. Politicians who inveigh against “pointing fingers” usually have something to hide.

I started writing a comment on the Planet Money thread, but they have a character limit on comments, and it’s hard for me to write anything in fewer than 1250 characters. So I emailed them my response and, what do you know, they put it up as a post on their blog. To save you any suspense, I think that if you are going to blame any individual (as opposed to, say, a whole category of activity, like “lax loan underwriting”), it should be Alan Greenspan, for reasons described further in that post.

Update: My friend Dave Sohigian blames an entire generation.