Asymmetric
So here's what I want to know: why are the banks and investment houses that puffed the 'net and telecoms bubbles not roasting over an open spit (as their hapless investments are)?
Between the Bush/Cheney administration's plucky determination in avoiding real action and the Clinton/Gore administration's blind eye to the abuses that caused this mess in the first place, there's not much hope of it either. The big investment houses will not be hit the way they should be, and the "markets" will continue on with the same structural deficiencies that have been allowed to fester for a decade.
The saddest part is that those who will be truly hurt are those that can least afford to be: individual investors. It's a classic asymmetric information problem and so long as the big investment houses are left untouched, the same problem will continue to play out, time and time again.