“So the Australians have a good ear for the interconnections of mortgage securities, but are tone deaf (deliberately?) to the political driving forces for the catastrophe.”

They think like accountants. I am an accountant and that is pretty much how I think.

Accountants look at systems and try to imagine how they can be gamed by thieves. Whether the thieves are customers or employees or sales executives or CEOs or leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus is beside the point to accountants who assume that anyone with an opportunity to steal will do so. I know that this is a wonkish perspective, compared to a world view that looks for villains so that they can be punished. Certainly it is a good thing to punish villains. But when looking post mortem at a financial debacle it is the job of accountants to consider systems of accountability and financial control so that those systems can be fixed.

Don’t get mad at accountants when they don’t talk about hanging folks from lamp posts. You are assuming that they don’t want to string folks up just as bad as you do, and you may be wrong in that assumption.