A chestnut from the investor Warren Buffett — “you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out” — has been quoted a lot lately as investors learn more about excessive risk-taking by lenders, bankers, hedge funds and other investors. There’s just one problem. The tide hasn’t gone out. The nudists identified thus far were exposed by the first round of bad news from the credit markets — among them, hedge fund managers at Bear Stearns, bankers at HSBC and a handful of other European banks and executives at Countrywide, America’s largest mortgage lender. In the coming months, we’ll get a better view of many others.

Everyone knows that loans and securities have plummeted. But investors aren’t necessarily going to find out the extent of losses. Under their distress are the homeowners whose defaults precipitated the turmoil, whose fates are intertwined with the markets, and not only because a coming surge in defaults implies further weakening of mortgage-backed investments. They are also a political problem for Wall Street. Today’s troubled homeowners took risks in dicey mortgages, as Wall Street did. But unlike Wall Street, they’ve yet to get real help from the government. As homeowner woes mount, Wall Street may have a harder time justifying its pleas for special treatment.