Twenty five people are at the heart of the global economic meltdown, according to a Guardian poll on ‘Who led us down the Road to Ruin.' They are: 1• Former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan: He backed sub-prime lending and the booming derivatives business, let the housing bubble to develop as a result of his low interest rates and urged homebuyers to swap fixed-rate mortgages for variable rate deals, which left borrowers unable to pay when interest rates rose. 2• Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England: He goofed up by insisting the crunch would not become an international crisis and refused to pump cash into the financial system. 3• Bill Clinton, former US president: He beefed up the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act to force mortgage lenders to relax their rules to allow more socially disadvantaged borrowers to qualify for home loans. In 1999 Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which ensured a complete separation between commercial banks and investment banks, which prompted the era of the superbank and primed the sub-prime pump. 4• Gordon Brown, UK prime minister: He put the City's interests ahead of other parts of the economy, such as manufacturers. He backed “light touch” regulation and a low-tax regime for the thousands of non-domiciled foreign bankers working in London and for the private equity business. 5• George W Bush, former US president: He let the rot Clinton introduced lie, allowing a vast amount of mortgage cash to be lent to borrowers who could not afford them. He did not rein back Wall Street with regulation (although the government did pass the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the wake of the Enron scandal). 6• Senator Phil Gramm: Work by the former US senator from Texas allowed the explosive growth of derivatives, including credit swaps. In 2001, he told a Senate debate: “I look at sub-prime lending and I see the American dream in action.” 7• Abby Cohen, Goldman Sachs chief US strategist: The “perpetual bull”, once rated one of the most powerful women in the U 43S, she failed to see previous share price crashes and was famous for her upwards forecasts. 8• Kathleen Corbet, former CEO, Standard & Poor's: She ran the largest of the credit-rating agencies that are widely blamed for failing to warn of the risks posed by mortgage-backed securities. The agencies have been accused of acting as cheerleaders, assigning the top AAA rating to collateralised debt obligations, the often incomprehensible mortgage-backed securities that turned toxic. 9• “Hank” Greenberg, AIG insurance group: Now aged 83, Hank - AKA Maurice - was the boss of AIG. He built the business into the world's biggest insurer. AIG had a vast business in credit default swaps and therefore a huge exposure to a residential mortgage crisis. When AIG's own credit-rating was cut, it faced a liquidity crisis and needed an $85 billion bail out from the US government to avoid collapse and avert the crisis its collapse would have caused. It later needed many more billions from the US treasury and the Fed, but that did not stop senior AIG executives taking themselves off for a few lavish trips, including a $444,000 golf and spa retreat in California and an $86,000 hunting expedition to England. 10• Andy Hornby, former HBOS boss: Top of his 800-strong class at Harvard. But it was his strategy, adopted from the Bank of Scotland when it merged with Halifax, that got HBOS in the trouble it is now. 11• Sir Fred Goodwin, former RBS boss: The man dubbed “Fred the Shred” for his strategy at Royal Bank of Scotland has now left the bank staring at a £28bn loss and 70% owned by the government. 12• Steve Crawshaw, former B&B boss: He turned Bradford & Bingley into a specialist in buy-to-let loans and self-certified mortgages - also called “liar loans” because applicants did not have to prove a regular income. 13• Adam Applegarth, former Northern Rock boss: His business model just collapsed when the credit crunch hit. 14• Dick Fuld, Lehman Brothers chief executive: Lehman Brothers' collapse in September had a catastrophic impact on confidence. Just before the bank went bust he had failed to secure a deal to sell a large stake to the Korea Development Bank and could have prevented its collapse. 15• Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin: Cioffi and Tannin were Bear Stearns bankers recently indicted for fraud over the collapse of two hedge funds last year, which was one of the triggers of the credit crunch. They are accused of lying to investors about the amount of money they were putting into sub-prime, and of quietly withdrawing their own funds when times got tough. 16• Lewis Ranieri: The “godfather” of mortgage finance, Ranieri created collateralized pools of mortgages. I=His Texas-based Franklin Bank Corp went bust in November due to the credit crunch. 17• Joseph Cassano, AIG Financial Products: Cassano ran the AIG team that sold credit default swaps in London, and in effect bankrupted the world's biggest insurance company, forcing the US government to stump up billions in aid. 18• Chuck Prince, former Citi boss: A lawyer by training, Prince had built Citi into the biggest bank in the world. When profits went into reverse in 2007, he insisted it was just a hiccup, but he was forced out after multibillion-dollar losses on sub-prime business started to surface. 19• Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide Financial: Bank of America recently paid billions to settle investigations by various attorney generals for Countrywide's mis-selling of risky loans to thousands who could not afford them. The company ran a “VIP programme” that provided loans on favourable terms to influential figures including Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, the heads of the federal-backed mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and former assistant secretary of state Richard Holbrooke. 20• Stan O'Neal, former boss of Merrill Lynch: O'Neal became one of the highest-profile casualties of the credit crunch when he lost the confidence of the bank's board in late 2007. Shortly before he quit, the bank admitted to nearly $8bn of exposure to bad debts, as bets in the property and credit markets turned sour. Merrill was forced into the arms of Bank of America less than a year later. 21• Jimmy Cayne, former Bear Stearns boss: The chairman of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns famously continued to play in a bridge tournament in Detroit even as the firm fell into crisis. Confidence in the bank evaporated after the collapse of two of its hedge funds and massive write-downs from losses related to the home loans industry. 22• Geir Haarde, Icelandic prime minister: He announced on Friday that he would step down and call an early election in May, after violent anti-government protests fuelled by his handling of the financial crisis. 23• The American public: If millions of Americans had just realized they were borrowing more than they could repay then we would not be in this mess. 24•John Tiner, 2003-07 FSA chief executive: He presided over the Financial Services Authority in July 2007 when the so-called “light touch” regulation was put in place. It was Tiner who agreed that banks could make up their own minds about how much capital they needed to hoard to cover their risks. 25• Andrew Lahde A hedge fund boss who quit the industry in October thanking “stupid” traders and “idiots” for making him rich. He made millions by betting against sub-prime. - SGAlmost two-thirds of informed adults worldwide - 62 percent - said they became less trusting of business last year, according to a survey commissioned by US public relations firm Edelman. 4,475 people in 20 countries were interviewed over the phone from Nov. 5 through Dec. 14. Below, a ranking of the 20 countries:Ireland 83 Japan 79 United States 77 Australia 74 Germany 73 South Korea 69 UK 67 France 67 Spain 67 Canada 66 Italy 62 Netherlands 61 Sweden 55 Poland 54 China 53 Mexico 50 Russia 49 India 49 Indonesia 32 Brazil 21 __
