Everyone involved is, to some extent, guilty of creating this crisis. There will be ample time to sort the players out later. The market can, and always has, repriced itself, punished the most foolish and meted out free-market justice.

What it can’t withstand, and what makes every day a good day to sell financials, is the ongoing credence given to debt ratings groups. We don’t need them now. The credit market is frozen to the point that we don’t need Moody’s et al. to rate new issues. The stresses on the banking system are obvious. We don’t need Moody’s or Standard & Poor's to point that out for us.

What we need to do is stop the ratings agencies from throwing napalm on the Street's dirty paper. Leave the shorts alone. Figure out the hedge funds later. Forget trying to stop “rumor mongering.” Simply muzzle Moody’s, Standard & Poor's and Fitch. Suspend their operations. They’ve lost the right to be part of this system. They will, of course, need to eventually be replaced and/ or reconfigured. Someone has to value the paper. But not these guys and not now.

Take the flame-thrower out of the rating’s agencies hands and the prospect of an inorganic wipeout like AIG is out of the equation. Going to zero becomes a less likely prospect. The market will find a price for the last financials standing and start rebuilding the world.

Until the Federal conversation moves from blaming shorts and gossip for Wall Street’s woes and starts centering around the amount of power being given to the likes of S&P the panic will continue to build, financial stocks will be great selling candidates and the underlying problems will only get worse.

I shorted the market on today’s open, via a long position in the SDS (an “ultra bearish” ETF). The market was being bought on “hope” that the bailout scheme du jour would “work”. Someday the market will rally; but not until someone explains to the folks in DC the real reason financial stocks are untouchable.

Here’s a hint: It’s not because of negative gossip.