The blame game is in full swing.

Anthony Bolton of Fidelity a successful and respected fund manager for many years gave a keynote speech at the National Association of Pension Funds investment conference and blamed the FSA for the Banking crisis.   

His argument is that the FSA new what the Banks business models were and only they knew and only they were in a postion to do anything about it.   

He was followed by Hector Sants of the FSA who is clearly in denial about the FSA's failure his euphemism for failure was " we could have done a better job of supervision" and "It is the global architecture and rules that failed".   

This is the city equivalent of the Scottish schoolboy's excuse when caught out, standing next to next to a broken window.  " It wisnae me - honest!  It wis a big boy and he ran away!"

You can read the full report in Money Marketing a trade newspaper for Financial Advisers filed under
Fund guru blames FSA for crisis.

Meanwhile, an inquiry by the National Audit Office, published on Friday, finds that Treasury officials identified serious flaws in the tripartite regulatory structure created by Mr Brown but decided it was not a priority to fix the problems.  Vince Cable is quoted as "Mr Brown had his head in the sands"

Over at the Treasury Mr Darling is saying "There were people 10 years ago or more recently arguing for more deregulation and a lighter touch but I was not one of them" to Commons Treasury Committee.  Mr Darling is said to be distancing himself from the light touch regulation enthusiasts

The NAO points to a situation where Goldman Sachs were appointed as advisers with £4 million success fee but with no definition of what success constituted in the contract.

The article in the FT regarding Bank Warnings makes interesting reading.

Entertaining as it is to watch politicians, bankers, ministers, regulators, and those who wish to become the same, duck and dive to avoid any hint that they might be responsible - it is not solving the problem.

How much time is being devoted by the regulator, the Treasury, the opposition to blaming and avoiding blame rather than sorting the problem out with practical measures for people who work in the real economy? 

I confidently predict that we sill shortly hear comments along the lines of "a culture of blame is not helpful to solving the real problems" and more on the same lines.   As soon as any party involved realises that they might be end up with any blame they will endorse this new forward looking culture and start calling for a positive attitude looking forward not back etc etc.