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Comment by runarberg | Hacker News Reader

The entire left wing of the political spectrum saw this coming (except social democrats; whom I don’t consider left wing). And if you were shorting stocks to make money of off this, you probably were not left wing. Additionally, left wing economists get plenty of ridicule from main stream capitalists no matter what they say, so there really is no reputation to either earn nor to keep.

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> The entire left wing of the political spectrum saw this coming

Feel free to cite at least one reputable source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouriel_Roubini

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Portes

Appreciate the links but I think we can both agree that there is no evidence that will come close to supporting "the entire left wing of politics" predicted the mortgage crisis

I was obviously exaggerating (and even so, I excluded social democrats). My point is though it was widely known on the political left that the economic boom was about to come to an end.

Do they see coming the predictable failure-modes of left-wing economies, though? History seems to suggest not. Also, did "the entire left-wing" see specifically a debt crisis through bad assumptions of creditworthy mortgage securities coming, or they just saw "capitalism" as a failure and here is a specific case, aren't we so prescient. That's not a prediction.

Left wing economists saw the former. Left wing as a whole saw the latter.

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