A problem is that, as you two state, that every report and theory must be categorized by the media as either “left” or “right” when the right division is “right” and “wrong.”

My only point is that these economic facts are agreed on by people who might not necessarily consider themselves “on the left” but rather just investigators — scientists, academics — without a particular developed political philosophy. I think a lot of climate scientists were unprepared for how political the content of their research would be.

But this is just semantics. I agree with your basic point that these arguments don’t reflect a left-wing bias — any scientist who honestly studies the issue of global warming will end up siding with those “on the left” because that’s where science leads them, regardless of their political leanings otherwise.

A note too: the narrative that the private unregulated market is responsible for the crisis isn’t a left-wing narrative per se, any more than the claim that global warming exists is inherently left wing. It’s the narrative of pretty much all credible economists I’ve heard speak on the matter. It’s just what the facts happen to be.

Only the WSJ opinion page seems to have contrary opinion, but its bias is well known.

Thanks to Lee for finding some statistics and facts to help me make sense of this stuff.

The right-wingers are saying this whole financial crisis erupted because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were encouraged by the government to give risky loans to people who clearly couldn’t pay them back.

The left-wingers are saying the crisis erupted because private lenders issued risky mortgages to people who couldn’t pay them back, not because of any government involvement but because they hoped to make a quick buck on commission and figured the housing bubble would never burst, thereby protecting their investment.

The right-wing story calls for less government involvement in the markets, and the left-wing story calls for more involvement in the way of regulation to protect against irresponsible lending/borrowing.

If only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was subject to this government “encouragement,” then isn’t it obvious that the left-wing story is basically correct and the right-wing story is basically misleading?

To me a problem is that as much as people want to have their voices heard, there is not enough time to collect the feedback with these decision need to be made. The new Congress takes office on Jan 3 and the new President on Jan 20 but by then it may be too late.