Adding to the hysteria over the financial crisis, Gretchen Morgenson tells us that banking as we’ve known it in the last couple of decades is not only dead but also good riddance. “A handful of arrogant greedmeisters blew up their institutions and took our economy off the cliff along the way.” I really wish it was that simple. Then we could tell wannabee greedmeisters that they’ll be spending serious time in the pokie if they pull a stunt like this again. The reality is that the source of the calamity isn’t fully understood yet, although it would sure appear that it was a confluence of incompetence, greed, bad regulation, and crazy incentive structures that characterized the behavior of many private, semi-public, and public institutions.

The problem that we now face involves fixing many different aspects of our financial system—from incentive systems that encouraged excessive risk taking (do we really believe bankers are innately more greedy than anyone else?), to financial engineers who didn’t think through the consequences of their innovations, to a vast maze of regulations that obviously didn’t work (remember this is probably one the most regulated sectors of the economy in terms of the numbers of regulations and regulators), to political institutions that even now focus on short-run elections rather than long-run growth and prosperity. Serious people, interested in the well-being of this country, should be focused on finding solutions for this mess, not singling out one group for blame that is widely held.

People need to think of the economy now like the final moments of Flight 1549 to Charlotte. Calm, measured and focused on mitigating total disaster. There is way too much at stake for hysteria or blame games.

We’ll survive if we work together to get out of this mess.