The Meltdown

Who's Responsible for the Depression?

Time’s new list of 25 culprits.

Those looking for a scapegoat for the financial crisis should grab the latest issue of Time: It features “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis.” The lineup includes the usual suspects (Alan Greenspan, Christopher Cox, Dick Fuld, Phil Gramm), some uninspired choices (The American Consumer), and a few odd ducks: Chinese President Wen Jiabao (“If cheap credit was the crack cocaine of this crisis—and it was—then China was one of its primary dealers.”) and Burton Jablin, the programming czar at the Scripps Network, which owns HGTV and other lifestyle channels (“helped inflate the real estate bubble by teaching viewers how to extract value from their homes.”).