You're mad. You're angry. You're miffed. You're steamed.

You don't need me to tell you that. You're madder than a Colorado House majority leader in a fit of cortisone-fueled 'roid rage. But when you're really mad/angry/miffed/steamed, what you need is someone to blame or - and I hope this isn't too technical for you - your head just might explode.

We have a crisis. We have a brain-numbing crisis. We have a multi-trillion-dollar crisis, as in a 12-zero crisis. But what we haven't had is a villain - or at least not one we could all agree on, or at least not since Dick Cheney left office.

But then came the rare piece of good news. Into the midst of this emergency walked a man who was perfect for the role. That man is, of course, Alex Rodriguez, who perhaps for the first time in his career has stepped up when it really matters.

You need someone to symbolize cheating? Check. You need someone to symbolize greed? Check and check. You need someone who has dated Madonna? Check, check and double-check. You need a New York bleepin' Yankee? Do I have to draw a pinstriped map for you?

There is no one easier in this talk-radio land of ours to despise more than A-Rod (or A-Fraud, or A-Roid, or A-R*d or, as Rupert Murdoch's New York Post dubbed him, well, you'll have look it up yourself; this is still a family newspaper).

So, when we needed it most, Sports Illustrated broke the story that Rodriguez had flunked a steroids test in 2003. The story was shocking and also entirely unsurprising. A-Rod is destined to break baseball's most important records, to replace Barry Bonds in the record books. He was supposed to remove the asterisk from the career home run record, and now he has guaranteed an outbreak of asterisks.

For those who don't follow baseball closely, Rodriguez is the great player who seems most likely to fail when the spotlight is brightest - and now he will probably someday succeed in breaking the game's records while also managing to fail spectacularly at the same time.

The steroids story almost had to go this way. Hall of Fame-type players are as likely now to go to prison for lying to Congress as they are to go to Coopers town for hitting home runs. The heroes don't seem so heroic, if you don't count the courage it takes to have a giant needle stuck in your butt.

The story is big enough that Barack Obama got an A-Rod question during his prime-time news conference, which Obama answered by saying how terrible it is for the kids, as if corrupting the kids is your problem. The problem is your 401(k) account and your employer's (OK, my employer's) shaky status and the fact that we once again find ourselves facing the eternal question: Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

If you were watching CSPAN on Wednesday, you didn't catch sight of Joe D. But you did see the nation's leading bankers - the guys from Morgan Stanley and Bank of America and Goldman Sachs and the rest - getting grilled by Congress as to how we got into this mess and what happened to all the billions they've already gotten from the government.

It wasn't pretty. The congressmen said how angry everyone was. And the Wall Street moguls conceded how angry everyone was. And the head of Bank of America said: "I feel more like corporal of the universe, not captain of the universe at the moment."

There were some interesting revelations, including the fact that none of the eight CEOs took a bonus last year and that seven said they wouldn't be needing any more TARP money.

The problem is that it's one thing to be angry with the banks, but it's another to figure out who exactly to be mad at. This isn't the long-ago era of robber barons, although there are plenty of crooks left. If you use the words corporate and greed in the same sentence these days, someone will accuse you of promoting class warfare.

Instead of John D. Rockefeller, we get Bill Gates, who becomes the world's leading philanthropist - and you're almost willing to forgive him for Vista. If you don't understand the confused feelings toward the rich, I offer just two words: Donald Trump.

Of course, we've been working on figuring out who to blame for a while. When the crisis began, we tried to blame poor people for taking big loans, until it became clear that there weren't enough poor people getting loans to cost trillions of dollars.

Then we blamed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, although we weren't sure why. Barney Frank took a tour, but that seems to have faded post-election.

We wanted to blame derivatives, but couldn't figure out what they were. We settled for toxic assets and, of course, the termination of the Glass-Steagall Act.

Henry Paulson was once to be the savior, then he became the bum who gave all the TARP money without asking where it was going.

Republicans blame Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, because it seems to work. And Democrats still blame George Bush, and for the same reason.

The real outrage came with the revelation of $18 billion handed out in post-bailout bonuses. And Tim Geithner, before he blew the new bailout plan causing the market to tank, got points for proposing $500,000 limits on pay from companies who took bailout money - leaving The New York Times to run a hilarious piece asking how you can afford to live on 500K in that town.

It's all so outrageous and all so confusing and - and, yes, all so much easier just to blame A-Rod.