There is fraud directed at consumers—deceptive advertising and unfair loan terms—that has been allowed to glide along pretty much unpunished, thanks to successive depletions of state and federal consumer-protection agencies, and the passivity of regulators like the Federal Reserve.

There is the "valuation-type stuff" that Power mentioned, in which investment banks package financial instruments and then, through accounting hocus-pocus, figure out ways of ripping off investors. So the potential victims range from inner-city working folks to trust-fund babies whose dogs are walked by their private bankers.

The lawsuits have already begun to roll in, and they may well be paving a road map for the authorities to follow.

On January 8, Baltimore sued Wells Fargo, claiming it sold more high-interest loans to blacks than whites, in violation of federal law. (Wells Fargo denied it did anything of the sort.)

A few days later, Cleveland sued 21 major financial institutions, saying they flooded the city with high-rate mortgages that laid waste to inner-city neighborhoods. The defendant list included the crème de la crème of finance: Citigroup, Bank of America, and Countrywide, among several others.

It's too early to say if these suits have merit or are just grandstanding. But there's no question that all manner of sleaze has been allowed to fester in the subprime market for some years, pretty much under the radar.

The F.B.I. is very often called in to sweep up after messes left by other federal agencies, such as in its effective roundup of microcap fraudsters in the 1990s after the S.E.C. let the practice go on unchecked. So that's happening again, it would seem.

A website I adore called the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, says that 223 U.S. lending operations have "imploded" (gone out of business or suffered some major loss) since late 2006. That leads to a lot of unhappy customers, a lot of dissatisfied former employees, a lot of lawsuits and, as night follows day, a lot of investigative leads that can be followed up by those busy men with guns.

So why did the F.B.I. tell us that 14 unnamed companies are under investigation? The only reason that makes any sense is that the F.B.I., apart from seeking some premature publicity, is seeking to reassure people affected by the subprime mess—that is, all us voters out there.

The message is, "Don't worry, folks, the F.B.I. is on the case. The subprime mortgage scandal is as good as solved. You can go back to your homes (if they haven't been foreclosed), and return to happy living and buying stocks."

If that's the message, as I surmise, it is not especially correct.

The F.B.I. was a bit hazy as to the character of those 14 companies under investigation. For example, it's not clear whether the F.B.I. was "dealing" with the firms that securitized mortgages by arresting fraud-committing employees and "flipping" them into informers—which can be done without much notice, by putting the court records under seal—or simply inviting the firms' chief financial officers in for a pleasant chat.

Power would only say, as regards the subprime lenders, that the F.B.I. is "looking over their books and of course there are some irregularities there that we're looking into." It's not clear if those "books" (computer records, I imagine) were handed over voluntarily or seized in raids by agents wearing bulletproof vests.

So what we have here, this wonderful "men with guns" moment, can indeed be relished by those of us watching this subprime thing. But remember that it is, more than likely, just the beginning of a long process, in which the men with guns are going to be doing a lot of relentless digging.

Meanwhile, don't worry, because the F.B.I. is on the case.