Arnold Kling has scribed More Fantasy Testimony on the financial crisis — just in case he gets a chance to present it to someone in power:
I reject the two main partisan narratives of this crisis. The Left wants to blame deregulation motivated by free-market ideology. It is true that poorly-conceived regulation was a major factor. However, the blindness of key regulators reflected not ideology but ordinary bureaucratic information loss. The knowledge that existed inside Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Treasury, and the Federal Reserve did not flow up to the leaders of those organizations.The Right wants to blame overly-aggressive lending to minorities and low-quality borrowers, promoted by Congress and regulators. While it is true that many loans were made that should not have been made, the problem was not the color of the borrowers’ skins or the content of their credit reports. The problem was low down payments and a large proportion of mortgages for what the industry calls non-owner-occupied homes or investor loans, and what ordinary people would think of as speculators.
The crisis had three main causes. First, securitization got out of hand, approaching three-fourths of total mortgage debt outstanding. Second, housing speculation got out of hand. Third, the gap in executive understanding of financial innovation, what I call the “suits vs. geeks divide,” got out of hand.