It's time to come clean.

From the shady dealings on Wall Street to the stupefying amount of easy credit consumed on Main Street, the financial deception and delusion of the past decade have been toxic to us all.

How did things get so out of control, at every level?

Here's a radical thought: The biggest villain in the Great Unraveling of 2008 wasn't a bunch of rogue investment banks or even a tidal wave of greedy consumers.

It was silence.

Our collective silence governed what we borrowed, what we spent and how much we owed, and it enabled people to delude themselves, for years, that "somehow it would all work out."

In order for things to start working again, that silence has to end.

The rules we follow

Why don't we talk about money?

Keeping quiet about finances is not the norm in every country, but in the U.S., the taboos against discussing money run deep.

We think about money all the time, yet it's considered crude to mention your financial state or inquire about someone else's. And despite some regional differences about what's acceptable to air in public, it's amazing how many of us stick to these unspoken rules:

• Never reveal your income or ask anyone else about theirs.

• Don't discuss what you spend (unless it was a bargain).

• Don't seek advice about financial decisions.

• Don't tell anyone how much money you save or have saved.

• Keep the contents of your portfolio or retirement account secret.

• Above all, never tell the truth about how much you owe.

To some degree, these taboos are in place to protect people's privacy (and their egos). But the old-fashioned etiquette that prevents open discourse about money has backfired in the worst possible way.

Money is just too complicated now for anyone to keep mum about their questions, problems, mistakes or intentions.

"In our grandparents' day, you had a paycheck, a mortgage, maybe some life insurance, but there weren't too many other moving parts," says financial planner Sheryl Garrett, the founder of the Garrett Planning Network.

Within our lifetimes, she says, working Americans have seen innovations such as the 401(k) plan, the rise of mutual funds -- thousands to choose from -- and so many types of credit that the somewhat primitive financial sectors of our brains can barely keep up.

Silence keeps you stuck

Given the massive alterations to the financial landscape and the taboo against discussing any of it openly (because of pride or the fear of looking foolish?), is it any surprise that millions of homeowners signed up for mortgages they didn't understand and couldn't afford?

Is it really so astonishing that we have become a nation carrying a staggering amount of personal debt, given that we weren't supposed to mention that we had any debt at all?

Silence can be financially devastating because it leads to isolation, says Amanda Clayman, a financial therapist in New York.

"Isolation is really destructive to finances in particular," Clayman says. "When you don't talk about money, it's hard to see that one issue is connected to another. Then the problem perpetuates itself.

"There may be things you could do differently, different information and solutions you could access, but you don't know about them because you're not discussing the problem."

Full disclosure works

If there's one thing we've learned here at Women in Red headquarters, it's that full disclosure is the fastest route to stability and sanity in our financial lives.

The Women in Red Racers, a get-out-of-debt support group on the MSN Money message boards, has collectively paid off an incredible $4 million so far. Each member publicly posts the exact amounts of her debt and in turn receives encouragement, advice and accountability.

No one makes you pay down your debt. But by being open with the group, you become ever more honest with yourself. Debt is the ultimate self-deception, and the Women in Red emphasis on getting real is like poison to the debt-based lifestyle.

The funny thing is, it's not all that different from the conclusions being reached at the highest levels of government and the uppermost echelons of corporate finance: Transparency is key.

When we refuse to be frank about money problems, when we fudge the facts and hide -- or hide from -- what's really happening in our lives, when we don't ask the hard questions (or even the easy ones), the mess only gets worse.

Betrayal at all levels

Financial infidelity, a catchphrase on everyone's lips lately, is a microcosm of what can occur when people don't communicate openly about money, when pretense and denial take over.

Nancy, a member of the Women in Red who lives in northern New York state, says it took her almost 10 years to figure out that her husband was hiding a serious spending problem. For a long time, she didn't want to see what was happening:

• Cash would go missing from the top of the bureau, where she had left it.

• When she asked her husband to rein in his spending, the credit card statements mysteriously stopped coming to the house.

• He tapped their savings account without telling her and later lied about having needed the money for something essential.

• He always seemed to overspend at the grocery store. Eventually, Nancy figured out that those big debits from the A&P included quite a bit of cash back.

"He was skimming in a lot of ways," she says.

Ultimately, after they divorced, Nancy learned that his money lies were concealing other problems: addictions to drugs and pornography.

Financial infidelity is an extreme example of the personal damage that can result when people hide money problems. But haven't we allowed the same sort of dysfunction to thrive in our culture, on a much bigger scale, by making it acceptable to dodge financial reality?

Put aside Wall Street shenanigans that almost brought down the global financial markets. Forget about government deregulation that fostered the subprime crisis. December's shocker is an even better example of how silence poisons: How else could one man defraud thousands of people and dozens of institutions of about $50 billion without getting caught?

No one wanted to talk about it.

Let's talk

So let's not leave it up to the government or the corporate giants to change this tune. Let's embark on 2009 with a resolution to be more upfront about our finances, across the board.

It won't happen overnight. I cringe at the idea of telling someone what I earn (although I'm dying to know other people's incomes, of course). But the point is less about sharing numbers and more about exchanging information: thoughts, decisions, how we get from A to B or why we picked C instead of D.

It would be titillating to learn how much you earn or the amount you've saved, but I'm more interested in the hows and whys: how you negotiated for your salary or whether you have a special saving strategy.

If we're having coffee and you admit how much debt you have, I'll tell you how much I had and how I got out of it.

And if I confess that I'm going to do a cash-out intergalactic balloon mortgage refi on my house in order to renovate the mud room, you can tell me I've lost my mind -- and all that it needs are some new curtains. See, we're making progress already.