OK, this is weird. There’s an economic dispute underway about the causes of the Great Recession — but that’s not what’s weird. What’s so strange in these days and times is that it is being carried out among well-informed people who actually look at data and argue in good faith. Hey, guys, don’t you know that sort of thing went out a couple of decades ago?

Anyway, on one side you have Dean Baker, who has long argued that the burst housing bubble was the main factor in both the slump and the slow recovery, with financial disruption a minor and transitory factor — a view I mostly agree with. On the other side we have none other than Ben Bernanke, who argues in a new paper that credit market disruption was indeed the big story.

This isn’t quite a head-on debate, since Bernanke is mainly focused on the first year or so after Lehman, while both Baker and I are more focused on the multiyear depressed economy that lasted long after the financial disruption ended. (Bernanke’s measures show the same spike and fast recovery as other stress indexes.) But there’s still a clear difference.

Unfortunately, I won’t be at the Brookings panel where Bernanke’s paper is discussed. But maybe I can raise the big question I have about his conclusions.