How many fingers does it take to look in the mirror?

In Sunday's NY Times respected macroeconomist and former vice chair of the Fed Alan Blinder revealed a few things about himself. First off, he apparently has too many fingers, as his column is entitled "Six Fingers of Blame in the Mortgage Mess". Even allowing for the normal thumb-finger confusion, 5 is the legal limit, innit? Second, he kind of has a case of Greenspan-itis as none of those fingers, not even the extra ones are pointed at the Fed.

Now I am not saying that the Fed's lowering of rates in 2001-02 and keeping them low and then when raising them doing so much more slowly that the Taylor Rule called for is the only or even the main cause of people chasing yields regardless of risk and people being able to get ridiculous mortgages, but hey, there's at least got to be a pinky-finger of blame available for monetary policy doesn't there? Especially when you have six fingers to work with?


UPDATE: A commenter has suggested that perhaps Alan Blinder was using both hands and actually had fingers to spare! Then let me say his failing is even worse! He had 2 (or even four depending on the thumb thing) digits left unused and still couldn't look in the mirror.