Passage Summary: People are arguing about what caused the recession, but the author points out that you don't always need to know why a problem started to know how to fix it, just like we used glasses before we knew why people were nearsighted.

Conclusion: It is incorrect to think that we must identify the cause of the current recession before we can fix the economy.

Reasoning: Historically, certain medical conditions like myopia were successfully treated with corrective lenses long before their genetic causes were understood.

Analysis: This is an 'Identify the Conclusion' question, so we are looking for the author's primary claim. The phrase 'It is a mistake, however, to assume...' serves as a clear indicator of the author's position against the 'hotly debated' mainstream view. The final sentence about myopia is an analogy used as evidence, not the main point itself. When you see a columnist rebutting a common assumption, that rebuttal is almost always the conclusion.