Investors hold their hands up

There's a nice piece in FTFM from the chair of the IMA (the fund managers' trade body):

[W]hile the banks created and sold the stuff, we investors (ahem, please don’t tell anyone) bought it. Not all mind you. Indeed, so little that the banks had to create their own special investment vehicles to absorb the avalanche of paper. (And, many of the rejects remain on the banks’ books to this day.)

Still, the investment community participated to a greater degree than we care to admit. There is no way around it – many investors were saps.

.....

The investment management community is not “just” the custodian of client capital; we are also responsible for our shareholders’ money. Both functions have been damaged because of a system that has gone wrong. It has gone wrong through excesses some of us warned against, others profited from, and others ignored altogether.