Interesting view and great data crunching. But I am amazed how one can write a long article purportedly about the causes of the 07/08 crisis without ever mentioning credit quality. By my impression, the prevailing view is that the crisis was caused by poor credit quality of some home buyers (I remember the term NINJA borrowers - no income, no job or assets). This was masked away in complex financial products (CDOs,...) that made it hard for buyers like banks to assess individual borrower quality and instead had them rely on (flawed) valuation models by rating agencies. The high ratings for these products allowed the market for them to balloon from a niche to a gigantic size that made it systemically important. When the first cracks started showing, worries about borrowers' credit quality turned into worries about banks' credit quality, leading to bank-run-like situations in the money markets, and ultimately the failure of banks like Lehman Brothers and others.
The article seems to start from a misleading claim, one that misses a crucial part of the picture, and that is much easier to refute than the full story. The data is still super interesting to see.