In light of the current credit crunch, the usual suspects have been investment banks, hedge funds, regulators, the US Fed, etc... but consultancies (especially MBB and strategy consulting ones) haven't been directly attacked.Obviously MBB and strat firms didn't cause this crisis but surely during the last few years they didn't point out the potential risks of a crisis when forecasting the environment for their clients (especially financial firms).Has anyone heard whether MBB's reputation have had a hit or are too many people busy attacking IB et al to think about who else was in this (if they were at all)?

MBB's job is not to make forecast for the next 5 year.. What they usually do is to use forecasts made by institution that do so and then model the growth of the client according to different hypothesis..Clients do not pay Mck or Bain to get a forecast. That said, all consultancies will be hit by this economic downturn.. However, reputational wise, I do not see any reason why it may change..