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Last winter, some local banking experts told the Business Record there wasn’t much to worry about. The national subprime mortgage crisis was being overblown by the media, they said. And, after all, they pointed out, only a small percentage of loans fell into the questionable category.

As much as journalists crave honesty and deplore disingenuousness, we hope they were trying to spin us. The alternative would be that they really believed Central Iowa was snug and secure and nothing bad was lurking at the door.

Now we have builders and subcontractors and banks and various connected businesses in a pinch.

If the people on the inside also are surprised by the speed at which trouble can roll downhill, that’s alarming. They’re the ones who are supposed to know how all the valves, buttons and levers link together.

Most of us were aware for some time that people were spending more than they should on houses and that lending standards had slackened. We tended to assume that the folks at the controls of the financial machine would know when to reduce speed and blow off some steam.

This is not just an attempt to assign blame. The crisis isn’t over, and after we’ve solved today’s problems, there’s always the post-crisis world to consider. What have we learned? Are we making the system safer and more stable?

The federal government has applied the usual bandages and now is reaching toward alternative healing methods; last week Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson began pushing banks to issue covered bonds, securities that are common in Europe but not in the United States. President Bush signed an expensive bill that offers affordable government-backed mortgages to homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure, and also tries to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In Central Iowa, however, our role is not to rewrite policies and invent new techniques. We just need to realize, admit and understand that we’re not insulated from what happens in the rest of the nation’s economy.