Tightening the reins on the big CDO players

Collateralized Debt Obligations...who is responsible for them? Well, it would seem that the large financial companies like Bear Stearns, JP Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers. GMAC and Merrill Lynch have some culpability for what is happening in the lending marketplace. Typically they are the ones that have reviewed and approved the lending guidelines that were put into play that has helped create the current housing / financial market situation. It is my understanding that those mortgages were included in CDO's which now are susceptible to having their ratings downgraded. I'm not an expert in that part of the market place, but it does seem to be having a dramatic impact (trickle down effect, if you will) on borrowers trying to refinance existing subprime mortgages, so that they are not put in a position of having to decide whether to buy food of pay the mortgage, due to the large increases in rates (as a result of the pervasive 2 and 3 year fixed ARMS historically used by subprime lenders to attract new clients).