Thumping rock music, a glittering lilac backdrop and vast US flags decorated the stage at the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association. The comedian Jay Leno and the former presidential adviser Karl Rove were on hand to lift the battered industry's spirits.

"We're all still here and we're still standing," declared Kieran Quinn, outgoing chairman of the association, who took the floor to a pounding chorus of Coldplay's Viva la Vida .

A sea of grey suits, the thousand or so bankers at San Francisco's Moscone conference centre inhabit ground zero in the global economic crisis. President George Bush, the Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, have all cited lax standards by mortgage lenders as a main reason for the financial paralysis that has spread from Wall Street to Europe and beyond.

"Everybody believed that house prices would just keep rising," Mr Quinn told his members. "We, and everyone else, had unprecedented confidence that it was a golden age of finance. We thought we had solved everything - no more recessions, no more inflation."

In a normal year, nobody would take much notice of a gathering of home-loan providers. But a noisy group of protesters were on hand to remind them of their unpopularity. Campaigners outside the conference wielded placards reading "Grand theft bail-out" and "Jail greedy bankers".

Several protesters made it into the hall. One leapt on to the stage and tried to handcuff Mr Rove.

Mr Rove pleased the assembled financiers by asserting that Democrats in Congress were to blame for the crisis by refusing to regulate the mortgage firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. "The 'let them do anything they want' crowd were all Democrats," he said.

One mortgage banker was moved to yell: "We love you Karl, you're great!"

Guardian News & Media