The current Wall Street mess may seem like 'all hell breaking loose' for industry outsiders, but those intimately familiar with the Financial District had been feeling the pinch for quite a while now. We all know now that this calamity is one of a mortgage meltdown, but is this something that could not have been foreseen, forewarned and more importantly avoided ?

My answer to that is YES and NO. YES, because the extent to which one is leveraged should be common sense awareness, however when it has become the modus operandi of the industry, our senses get immune to it and we no longer question the premise. When everyone is crying afoul about fundamentals not being in place, do we really mean that ? The fundamentals on a good day are the basis for everything running well and smoothly, everything that promoted growth, success and forward vision. But those same fundamentals look shabby on a overcast day. I doubt if there was a way to tweak enough variables in the macro environment any fundamental principle will hold steady.

However there has been wrong doings by higher ups in financial institutions in following overly aggressive lending policies such as the zero down payment mortgage and overlooking the borrowing market's risk tolerance and handling capacity. Banks competed in going after the home owners market and to bolster short term gains with blinders on. They hoped for the best with no contingency planning. Tactics triumphed over strategy.

Having said the above let's look at the bigger picture, the macro environment also. Let me try to draw a crude analogy. When everyone is doing 80 on a 65mph zone on the highway, do you blame the traffic regulations or one individual driver or the collective body of ALL the drivers ? All I am trying to say is that this is a systemic problem. Its like suddenly the tyres of all cars going over 70 started to blow out. When modus operandi has been established it is hard to question it. You get caught up in the day to day operational as well as strategic visions in respect to market growth, competition and threats which do not overwhelmingly ask you to question, much less change it.

However it's also true that this did not happen overnight. The signs of mortgage meltdowns had probably sent chills down the spines of these Financial giants long before anyone could imagine this day was coming ...I bet they already started to question that same modus operandi and trying to cope and re-strategize .. but changing the tenets of an industry base is much harder than even the idiomatic 'turning a big ship around'.

So folks let's get real, there is blood on the street and there will be heads rolling soon, but when all this gets back to square one again : Let's ask ourselves a few questions: What lesson have we learnt ? . What will be the checks and balances for the future so that a given "modus operandi" no matter how fundamentally strong they are, have been given the day of light for analysis, rethinking and independent oversight. What bells and alarms can be put in place and what parameters can be used to evaluate at which point a threshold of tolerance for a certain variable even when things look good is being exceeded ? why were we not able to nip this in the bud ? Or was it already too late by the time the first shoots of problem started sprouting ?