There is in every major scandal a moment of epiphany, at which the glum reality of transgression—the possible loss of loss of liberty—begins to set in. I call it the "men with guns" moment. The subprime mortgage mess reached that moment on Tuesday.

The "men with guns" moment for subprime was officially unveiled at a briefing that was held for reporters in Washington by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The F.B.I. said 14 unnamed corporations are being investigated for "possible accounting fraud" and other violations. Insider trading and "valuation-type stuff" is being probed, Neil Power, chief of the FBI's economic crimes unit, said.

Power was quoted as saying that the F.B.I. is "looking at the accounting fraud that goes through the securitization of these loans" and is working "hand-in-hand" with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This could be potentially explosive stuff, or so it seems at first blush. After all, the subprime mortgage mess is a kind of massive, mind-blowing, symphony of greed.

The players include subprime lenders like Countrywide Financial, which loaned money to pretty much anyone while the housing market was soaring, and major investment banks like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and so on and so on. The banks packaged the mortgages and then sold them to other banks, pension funds, hedge funds, and an array of so-called "sophisticated" investors.

But, there are aspects to this thing that make me think that the announcement Tuesday, "men with guns" moment that it was, was not as much of an epiphany as meets the eye.

The first thing that occurred to me when I heard about this was: Why am I hearing about this?

When the F.B.I. talks about investigations of economic crimes, as opposed to kidnappings or terrorist attacks, it usually talks at the end of an investigation, not the beginning of one. At such a time it may say "the investigation is continuing" or some such, but that is about as far as it goes. This usually takes place at a press conference at which all the agencies involved, even peripherally, have a moment in front of the cameras.

Evidently the F.B.I. didn't feel it was tipping off any miscreants by announcing the "unnamed 14" investigated "corporations." No wonder. The subprime mess is an unbelievably massive economic conundrum, in which the list of potential suspects is something you'd usually find in an Oliver Stone movie.

The possibilities are endless. When Wall Street packages things that it does not entirely understand—in this case, instruments consisting of mortgage loans to working-class stiffs whose terms they didn't understand either—you have a recipe for disaster.