Not long ago, I noted that I almost never see charts, graphs or any kind of data used on conservative blogs that are not econblogs. I have since asked around on a few other blogs and gotten no suggestions for ones that use data rather than opinion. Recently, Conor Friedersdorf also noted that conservatives do not use charts. He also notes that Manzi and MacDonald use data in their analyses. Manzi? Yes, sometimes, though he is more likely to make philosophy of economics arguments in my experience. I am not familiar enough with MacDonald to comment.
This, of course, leads to chart of the day. When my wife tunes to Fox, or talk at work turns to mortgages, I still hear the Fannie and Freddie caused the crisis theme being repeated. While they played a part along with lots of other actors, their role as primary cause has been pretty thoroughly debunked. The timeline alone does not fit. Now, the good folks at Calculated Risk have published the chart below. Fannie and Freddie are actually much lees likely to have seriously delinquent loans than the private lenders. The next time someone launches into the F and F rant, offer to show them this chart. (CR link here. )
![[HarvardSeriouslyDelinquent.jpg]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/Sj-y2wjEWUI/AAAAAAAAFnE/WlRV4mAIsng/s1600/HarvardSeriouslyDelinquent.jpg)
Heather Mac Donald, not MacDonald. Friedersdorf makes the same mistake.
Partial quibble: ISTM these charts measure the # of mortgages. A better measure would be a chart showing the dollar amount of mortgages in each category, and (ideally) the losses from the delinquent ones. These charts are certainly suggestive, however; I do wish I’d had them at my disposal the last time I was debunking the “Frannie caused the crisis” meme on The Other Blog.
Last I checked, Frannie did have non-trivial holdings of junk mortgages; however, even those were a minority of the market’s total holdings (which implies that even absent Frannie purchases, such someone else would’ve bought them).
Good point. IIRC, these private mortgages were actually the larger, higher priced ones, but I could not verify that, so I did not put it in the post. That is certainly where I would expect a lot of the 1A mortgages to reside.
Steev