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A year ago today, venerable Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers fell, spreading shock and awe throughout the financial world. With the loss of Lehman's $600 billion in assets, there was talk of ATM machines no longer spitting out cash, and credentialed economic prognosticators started using the dreaded D-word en masse for the first time since folks were actually living in Hoovervilles.

It didn't turn out as bad as predicted during those nervous days: There will be no depression, and if you stocked up on ammunition, you're going to need a safe place to store it for a while.

Nevertheless, the same factors -- primarily the subprime mortgage crisis -- that took down Lehman seem to have dealt a pretty serious blow to the U.S. economy. In fact, Obama's economic guru Larry Summers recently conceded that even if the economy starts growing at a normal rate, there will still be scary double-digit unemployment for the foreseeable future.

Now that we are a year away from the dramatic bankruptcy that sealed our bleak, if not quite disastrous, financial future, let's discuss who's most to blame.

Wall Street: Not content with their seven-figure salaries, our financial elite went headlong for the eighth or even ninth figure by embracing a series of highly complicated (and highly leveraged) derivatives-based financial instruments that turned the U.S. economy into a casino. It all collapsed like a house of cards when the winds of economic unrest began to blow.

Why they're not to blame: Exploring better ways to raise capital is part of an I-banker's job description. And you weren't complaining when your 401(k) was pointing toward the top of your laptop.

The Government: Between hardly even pretending to regulate Wall Street, and actively encouraging bad mortgages through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government's fingerprints are all over this mess. Maybe packing our nation's economic policy team with Wall Street veterans -- as the last couple administrations did -- isn't such a good idea.

Why they're not to blame: With the amount of money the financial houses and insurance companies throw out in campaign contributions, we can't really expect our politicians to be responsible for reigning in Wall Street.

The Public: An awful lot of Americans were guilty of thinking they deserved that five-bedroom McMansion with the great room, even though their bank statement suggested otherwise. We all know you can't get something for nothing, and that should go double when that something is credit.

Why they're not to blame: A walk through the mall suggests most people can't add the calories in their Big Gulp to the calories in their Cinnabon. So how could the general public ever be expected to understand the complicated math behind an adjustable-rate mortgage?

Whom do you think is to blame? Or should we all just stop pointing fingers and start pinching pennies?