Four myths in the GOP Platform

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For (4) you could argue that the consensus is that the government's housing policies were a contributor to the crisis, but not the primary cause; although even then you have analysts like FCIC member Peter Wallison who argue that it was indeed the primary cause.

No economist I know of thinks that fannie mae and freddie mac were anything but a tiny percentage of the subprime market, and Wallison's view has been widely discredited by economists.  And I don't necessarily agree with the policies of mae/mac at the time.

So many trillions of dollars of garbage housing loans were originated because middlemen like Goldman saw a quick buck to be made by begging poor people to imprudently borrow money from them, then packaging those loans into impossible to understand CDOs and dumping them onto the laps of hapless suckers like AIG, who bought them not understanding what they were and thinking that they were great.  THAT was the cause of the financial crisis.

It was made worse by the people who were allowed to start gambling against the housing market using reckless instruments, which took a failing banking system and poured gasoline all over it.

ETA:  Firms like Goldman had an incestuous relationship with ratings agencies, which helped to convince the suckers that the CDOs were actually a totally great buy.  Eventually, of course, firms were overleveraged and the government had to step in to stop a run on banks.

Of course the fraudulent companies (though apparently not criminally fraudulent) that engaged in the NINJA loans are the most to blame.  There is some bipartisan blame as the vast majority of members of both parties bought into the nonsensical Washington Consensus that 'financial markets regulate themselves, however I think the majority of the blame to be placed on the government belongs to the Republican Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, the idiot Alan Greenspan, and the Republican Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Chris Cox.

The revisionist history blaming Fannie Mae or Freddy Mac or Bill Clinton's banning of 'red lining' are nothing but blatant lies.

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This is so stupid and why people don't trust fact checking at all.  It's basically "they said Obama is bad, well I don't think he's bad MYTH!". Or "they said he doubled the national debt, which is true but he didn't double this other number that has nothing to do with the conversation MYTH!"

The 'other number' is actually very significant to the conversation as the article was completely correct that most economists regard the debt to GDP ratio as being much more important than the raw debt/deficit figure.

It would be more accurate to say though that both are ways to look at the debt, and that it is true that Obama more or less doubled the size of the national debt.

Of course, when Reagan was President and the debt and deficits increased significantly despite his campaign promise to eliminate the deficit, Republicans blamed the Democratic Congress because Constitutionally Congress is responsible for the budgets (especially the House of Representatives).

Similarly, when Bill Clinton was President and the deficit was eliminated Republicans gave the Republican majority Congress the credit, and Newt Gingrich and John Kasich even took personal credit.

So, if Republicans actually cared about intellectual honesty, then from the 2011 budgets on, then it's the Republican House of Representatives that is to blame for the increase in the deficit, and not President Obama.