Americans can rightfully be angry about this financial mess we’re in. Trouble is, they aren’t sure who they should be mad at. Fortunately, the Center for Public Integrity is here to help.

Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown? The Top 25 Subprime Lenders and Their Wall Street Backers is a mammoth study on the financial meltdown, why it happened, and who is responsible.

We’re not saying any one person should be singled out for blame, necessarily. However, we are providing a few candidates based on the facts. Think of this as a tripod of blame — a three-legged stool of responsibility, or better yet, irresponsibility:

First, there are the subprime lenders — the worst of which saturated the airwaves with commercials, bombarded e-mail inboxes with spam, and happily made loans to virtually anyone who could sign their name.

Second, there are the giant Wall Street and European investment banks that backed all that subprime lending. They put up hundreds of billions of dollars so they could create securities from these risky mortgages to sell to investors.

And lastly, there is the government that stood by and did nothing. Bottom line: We have witnessed a massive regulatory failure of catastrophic proportions.

In this project we identify the top “Subprime 25” lenders. We report that at least 21 of them were either owned or financed by a financial institution that has received government bailout money, and that four of these have paid big settlements for lending abuses.

What we learned was that these banks got themselves into this mess themselves. But, for “financial stability” reasons, they want and need our government’s help to get themselves out. If this is truly the case — if the only way we can keep the wheels of the financial system turning is to commit trillions of dollars to private industry — then there is something seriously wrong here. Getting mad yet? See the tripod of blame above.

According to our study, nine of the top 10 lenders were located in California — seven from Orange and Los Angeles counties. Of these 25 lenders, 20 have gone broke or been sold to avoid bankruptcy. All five still lending have received government bailout money.

Here are the top 10:

To learn more, start clicking.

Next entry: ECONOMY: A Discussion About The Roots of the Financial Crisis
Previous entry: ACCOUNTABILITY: Lawmakers Ask Obama for Whistleblower Protection