Helaine Olen wrote earlier this week about the falling star of personal finance gurus, but not all TBM readers liked what they were hearing. Some rushed to defend their idols, while others argued over who and what factors are really to blame for the financial troubles individuals are now facing. Here's a quick roundup of the highlights.

Commenter Frank Curmudgeon quipped:

The poor quality of mainstream money advice is a tragedy. One person following bad advice and acting foolishly is a shame, but a nation following bad money advice is a disaster. Can you imagine what would happen if, just to make up an extreme example, tens of millions of Americans bought more house than they could afford becuase the "experts" told them it was a good investment? The resulting bubble could cause a global recession.

Tim418 defended Orman:

A lot of the recent economic problems have stemmed from people with not enough money buying expensive homes with little or no money down.

I can assure you that Suze Orman never advised anyone to do that. She's all about being responsible with spending.

Hopeful lily acknowledged the structural causes of individual crises but defended the common sense value of the advice the big finance personalities offer:

[S]omebody has to at least try to keep us from spending all our discretionary income on idiotic trifles, or buying worthless stocks, or going into and staying in massive credit card debt. Are Cramer and Orman wrong about some things? Sure. Is their delivery over the top? Definitely. Is their only purpose to scam the public? I don't think so. Should they be blamed for every current bad outcome on Wall St.? No.

Shadymilkman thought Olen's critique was overgeneralized:

Jim Cramer is a bag of hot gas, but I think your swipe at Suze Orman was not fair considering that you based it off of one thing without looking at how she is encouraging people to be frugal in their lives, which makes a big deal of difference.

Meanwhile, Jcgret thought it should be more inclusive:

"[G]iven the state of my portfolio after my experience with my real personal financial advisor, I can't act on their investment advice anyway. My main point is someone['s g]otta take a close look at the impact of the real personal financial advisors out there who work so tirelessly and anonomosouly to convince suckers like me that with their expert guidance and research behind them our piece of the American dream will continue well beyond our ability to get up out of bed to take advantage of it.

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