Joshua Hedlund comments on how the econ. blogosphere was fooled yesterday by a misleading graph about bank failures:

It would be like analyzing data on Shipwreck Deaths From Giant Boats By Month From 1900-1940 and going, Hmm, I wonder why so many people die from shipwrecks in April? Maybe it has to do with the intersection of seasonal trade routes…

…or not.

Hedlund also criticizes the working paper itself, which seems unfair. That paper is a straightforward effort to update existing data on bank crises. The offending graph is a small part of the paper’s narrative. It is the kind of distracting detail that the working paper review process is meant to expunge. As the paper itself notes, IMF “Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate.”