Two AEI scholars fabricated the claim that GSEs caused the crisis

Evidence

Thus has Peter Wallison, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis. His partner in crime is another A.E.I. scholar, Edward Pinto, who a very long time ago was Fannie’s chief credit officer. Pinto claims that as of June 2008, 27 million “risky” mortgages had been issued—“and a lion’s share was on Fannie and Freddie’s books,” as Wallison wrote recently. Never mind that his definition of “risky” is so all-encompassing that it includes mortgages with extremely low default rates as well as those with default rates nearing 30 percent. These latter mortgages were the ones created by the unholy alliance between subprime lenders and Wall Street. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 881

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader ‘welfare queen’ fabrication genealogy and to the Neoliberal Thought Collective’s talking-point machinery described elsewhere in this book. — connects to: Mainstream journalists now openly suspect economic crisis analysis was deliberately manipulated — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 826
• QUESTION: Worth chasing the original Pinto paper to see how the 27 million figure and its cutoff definition of ‘risky’ were constructed.

Broader Connections

• Mainstream journalists now openly suspect economic crisis analysis was deliberately manipulated #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 826