Well someone had to say it...

In law school we learn about a term: damnum absque injuria, which is essentially a fancy sounding way for a judge to say "sorry plaintiff...I can't help you here." The idea is that some damages do not correspond to legal wrongs in a civil (torts) sense, and thus no recovery can be had. An opposing principle is known as res ipsa loquitor, which is a fancy way for a judge to say "wow...someone MUST have been negligent if X happened." The idea is that in certain cases, 'the thing speaks for itself'. The classic example is a loose barrel rolling down a public street and striking an innocent pedestrian. Common sense would lead us to believe that barrels do not typically roll down streets and injure innocent bystanders, and thus someone must have negligently caused or allowed that particular barrel to roll down that particular street and hit that particular pedestrian. The pedestrian may be in no position to say who acted negligently to cause the barrel to injure them, or even if they have some idea who (the owner of the barrel factory up the street for example), they may have no way of knowing how they acted negligently, thus they would have no way of proving it.
Now to my main point. Well, someone had to say it... I would argue that our current financial crisis falls on the res ipsa side rather than the damnum side of the spectrum. It would be hard to imagine that the world financial system could become precariously balanced on the edge of complete disaster without someone lying, misleading, taking unauthorized risks, or otherwise acting in an illegal fashion. Which brings us to one of the core issues of the financial crisis: credit ratings. If all these CDSs and NINJA loans and MBSs were so risky, why in the world were they rated AAA+? Why would municipal investments and 'safe' mutual fund managers gorge on these new financial assets if they were risky? Well in a sense this is res ipsa loquitor. We can say with hindsight that the assets were actually VERY risky, and thus the AAA+ ratings were WRONG. So who is to blame? Well look who is up on the chopping block now...Moody's