Dropping the (crystal) ball: This crisis duped them all

"Nobody could have predicted this," Wall Street pros like to say as they seek to absolve themselves for failing to foresee the financial system meltdown of 2008. Well, almost nobody at the top of the financial industry saw what was coming, that's for sure. Either that, or they were just flat-out lying to us along the way. Here, listed chronologically, are nominees for the most infamous pronouncements made as the crisis unfolded this year:

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Block that metaphor: At Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s annual shareholder meeting in April, Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein couldn't seem to find the perfect metaphor to pinpoint where we were in the credit crisis. So he used three of them.

"We're closer to the end than the beginning," he said. "I think we're getting to that point where people are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel."

Then he made a football analogy: "Maybe we're at the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter," he said. "If you watch sports, sometimes there's a lot of timeouts in the fourth quarter. It takes longer to play than any of the other quarters, and sometimes it ends in a tie and goes into overtime."

And sometimes the financial system just implodes, ruining all sports metaphors.

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Everything's fine, why do you ask? With IndyMac Bancorp's shares in the $3 range on May 1, as Wall Street bet on the Pasadena mortgage lender's demise, CEO Michael W. Perry came out swinging against the bears.

In a financial filing, Perry noted that "given the decline in our stock price, some people have questioned IndyMac's survivability in the current environment. I am here to tell you that I believe we have turned a corner and that our business is improving."

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Next time you imply I shouldn't buy bonds, remind me not to pay any attention: Hard to believe now, but as recently as six months ago Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet were talking tough on inflation and interest rates, hinting that they were ready to tighten credit. Doing so can push up yields on long-term bonds, lowering their market value.

The European Central Bank, in fact, raised its benchmark short-term rate to 4.25% from 4% on July 3 -- a move now considered to be one of the most boneheaded in central bank history.

In their defense, Bernanke and Trichet were staring at soaring commodity prices in June, led by oil.