No one wants to excuse the managers and regulators of financial companies from responsibility for the financial crisis. But it is too easy to assign blame and walk away, without doing the serious work of finding out what really happened.

The fall in housing prices and mortgage values has exposed a serious flaw in the idea that private, shareholder-owned, government-sponsored enterprises, such as FannieMae and Freddie Mac,can be effective instruments of government policy.

Is the current crisis the result of a failure of capitalism or a failure of government policy?

What is accounting truth? This is the best we can do.

The government takeover of Fannie and Freddie was necessary because of their massive losses on more than $1 trillion of subprime and Alt-A investments.