A lot of prestigious "academics" who promote the lie about Fannie and Freddie causing the financial crisis are paid by right wing think tanks.
In his New York Times column, "The Big Lie," referring to The Big Lie about Fannie and Freddie causing the financial crisis, Joe Nocera writes:
You begin with a hypothesis that has a certain surface plausibility. You find an ally whose background suggests that he’s an “expert”; out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating the data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own...Soon, the echo chamber you created drowns out dissenting views; even presidential candidates begin repeating the Big Lie.
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.
Pinto's work was thoroughly debunked by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The FCIC did what Wallison, Pinto and their advocates consistently refuse to do; they refuse to look at loan performance--delinquencies, defaults, losses on liquidation--on a comparative basis.
It's worthwhile to mention the "academics" at some of America's most prestigious institutions, who lend a veneer of credibility to the Big Lie by citing Wallison's and Pinto's "research" as an authoritative source:
Columbia University, Charles Calomiris
Berkeley, Dwight Jaffee
University of Chicago, Raghuram Rajan
Harvard, Gregory Mankiw
NYU, Lawrence J. White
NYU, Viral V. Acharya
NYU, Matthew Richardson
NYU, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh
Boston University, Laurence Kotlikoff
University of Texas, Austin, Jeffrey Friedman
George Mason University, Anthony Sanders
Many of these "scholars" get paid to agree with one another. Sanders, White, and Jaffee, along with Peter Wallison, are colleagues at the Mercatus Center, which was founded and funded by the Koch Brothers. Calomiris and Mankiw are also colleagues of Wallison at the American Enterprise Institute.
You have to feel sorry for the students who pay thousands and thousands of dollars to take classes from these guys.
Other academics are colleagues of Wallison's at the AEI who, though they don't specifically cite his work, support the false narrative that Fannie and Freddie were the central cause of the financial crisis:
University of Chicago, Ray Ball
University of Chicago, Kenneth W. Dam
University of Chicago, Christian Leuz
Loyola University Chicago, George G. Kaufman
University of Pennsylvania, Richard J. Herring
University of Pennsylvania, Marshall E. Blume
Stanford, Kenneth E. Scott
Carnegie Mellon, Chester Spatt