The scale of the credit crisis may dwarf other recent financial disasters but experts believe it will follow a familiar pattern. After the boom and the bust, heads must roll. As the $700 billion rescue plan fights its way through Washington the scaffolds are already being built.

“The scale of this problem has been unprecedented and I expect the response will be, too,” said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at the law firm McCarter and English. Someone is going to have to pay for sending the financial world into a panic and wiping out the savings of millions.

Mintz said that, just as they did after the dotcom bubble burst and Enron collapsed, investigators will start with a broad investigation and then narrow their focus until they find cases that can be successfully prosecuted in court. “They need to know who knew what and when,” he said.

The FBI is combing through documents and e-mails related to the collapse of AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Lehman Brothers looking for wrongdoing that may have contributed to the credit crisis.

Some 500 prosecutions are under way against mortgage brokers and appraisers at the sharp end of the subprime scandal. The top US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has ordered more than two dozen hedge funds to hand over trading information as it seeks evidence that short-sellers spread rumours to undermine the companies they had targeted.

Two former Bear Stearns bankers, Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi, have been charged with fraud after allegedly misleading investors by painting a rosy picture of their hedge-fund investments. The pair deny the allegations.

As with previous scandals, legal experts believe the government is fishing for minnows to use to catch much bigger fish.

“Every financial debacle we have had needed a face to it,” said James Cox, law professor at Duke University. “We haven’t put a face on this scandal yet.” But he believes one will be found. “The American psyche needs a culprit. It’s also a good political diversion from the more complicated issues like sorting out regulation.”

The big problem with this scandal is that it is so large and complex, and affects so many companies, that it is hard to pin the blame on any one group, let alone an individual.

The legal inquiry makes up one of the “three Rs” now being pursued on both sides of the Atlantic by law makers and reformers: retribution, regulation and remuneration.

Christopher Cox, the chairman of the SEC, said on Friday that the voluntary supervision programme for Wall Street’s largest investment banks was “fundamentally flawed” and closed it down. Oversight will largely shift to the Federal Reserve, but there are more fundamental moves afoot.

Last week the world’s banking watchdogs began devising a new system of regulation for the financial industry at the meeting of the International Conference of Banking Supervisors in Brussels.

Underlying their agenda was the creation of a new global super-regulator that could ultimately bring every financial institution around the world under the same set of rules, including hedge funds.

“We must have global standards,” said Eugene Ludwig, who spent five years as America’s banking regulator under President Clinton. “You can’t operate these large corporations safely without having similar standards across the globe. You can have one place that has lax standards; everyone then moves there and blows the place up.

“Similar businesses of a similar size should be regulated the same way. You can’t put a label on something – call it the hedge-fund industry or the private-equity industry – and say well, you are not regulated because you have put another label on yourself. If you called yourself a merchant bank, you would be regulated heavily.

“If you go back to the root of the problem in the American housing market, unregulated mortgage brokers created bad paper - paper that wouldn’t have been so easily created in the regulated industry. The regulated industry, in order to compete, stretched itself out to do similar things.

“Those two sides together found a mechanism to pour money into short-term profitable business - and almost brought the house down.”

A raft of principles was agreed last week that would force banks to hold larger cushions of cash to see them though troubled times. There were also plans to introduce more regular stress tests for banks, and rules for bonuses and incentives.

An overhaul of the American regulatory system will have to wait until after November’s election. But now that there are only two Wall Street investment banks – down from five at the start of the year - any changes adopted in Europe are bound to have a much larger effect on American thinking.

In Britain there is confusion over how the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the Treasury and the Bank of England are likely to respond to the crisis. There will be moves to clamp down on executive pay, as threatened by Alistair Darling, along with an “urgent review” by Lord (Adair) Turner, the new chairman of the FSA.

Some action has already been taken by Britain’s regulators. In the past few weeks nearly every financial institution in the country has had a questionnaire from the FSA asking basic questions. Is the company’s board sufficiently qualified? Is it made up of people who have sufficient time on their hands to devote to the task? Does the management team have enough experience?

Regulators everywhere are concerned about creating too many rules. Nobody wants to cripple the financial sector, only to ensure it operates safely.

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