Pressure was mounting this weekend for a root-and-branch review of the role played by auditors in the credit crunch, following the revelation that Lehman Brothers was able to hide $50bn (£32bn) of debts from regulators despite checks by accountancy firm Ernst & Young.

MPs and financial experts called on regulators to clean up the audit industry as part of a clampdown on reckless and risky practices in the financial sector.

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Ernst & Young, which earned fees of $31m from auditing Lehman Brothers in 2007, has insisted that a thorough internal review showed it did nothing wrong.

The auditors have long been as dodgy as any of the people they looked into

Not always. Auditing is barely profitable for accountancy firms. They usually have to bid for big audits and then make up the profits on the consultancy work. I personally think that this can be a huge conflict of interest. If they provide the consultancy work they will have a tendency to overlook their involvement in such deals.

Longer term though maybe a criminal action against Ernst & Young that effectively kills them off like Arthur Anderson after Enron. It will mean fewer big auditors but that might mean that the auditors become more cautious. To lose two big auditors in a little more than a decade might make them re think their client relationships.