Only a few people were able to name all of the participants in my challenge…

The top financial players:

Top – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

Left – Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee

Right – Former-Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan

Bottom – Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

While there are a number of other people who were considered for inclusion in the above chart, these are the ones who made the cut.

Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan’s hand-picked choice for Federal Reserve Chairman. A man struggling against market forces to stabilize the economy.

Alan Greenspan, a man who many believe is the arch-villain who set the global pool of capital on a flight to find a relatively safe investment yielding more than the artificially low 1% return available on treasury securities. These are the people who invested in the initial mortgage backed securities; and when the availability of good mortgages ran out, the Wall Street Wizards created more out of dodgy loans using  hedges to mitigate the increased risk.

Barney Frank – complicit in allowing the fiction that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were well-managed, well-capitalized and sound investments.

Henry Paulson, the man with “no-plan” who famously said give me $700 billion with little or no restrictions and I will try to solve the problem. A number he apparently picked out of thin air – less than an ominous $1 trillion and significant enough to get attention.

But the most important player in the financial crisis is the man in the middle: the irrepressible Robin Williams -- who reminds us that financial wounds are not fatal and that, given sufficient humor, we shall weather this crisis.

-- steve