Greenspan: Don't blame me for this mess

Greenspan: Don't blame me for this mess
Posted March 11, 2009 9:22 AM
The Swamp



Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, at a October 2008 congressional hearing. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

by Frank James



Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has gotten a lot of blame for the current economic crisis which grew out of the housing bubble.

His once near absolute belief in the wisdom of markets and bias against regulation is often mentioned by critics as kindling that helped create the inferno of a housing crisis that has incinerated trillions of dollars of wealth.

Many observers have also pointed the finger at Greenspan for leaving key interest rates too low for too long in the earlier part of this decade.

Greenspan has apparently had enough of this. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, he said it wasn't the Federal Reserve keeping the federal-funds rate too low that caused the crisis.

Instead, it was all that money that developing economies, especially China, saved up and then flooded the world with which kept long-term mortgage rates exceptionally low even after the Fed raised the rates it controlled.

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http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/03/greenspan_dont_blame_me_for_th.html

Fucking economic genius my ass. I saw this coming and either you didn't or knew but didn't say it was coming. And sorry, but I am NOT all that smart...but I don't exactly pretend to be either.

Of course if MBAs don't kiss your wrinkly white ass's philosophy we don't get to work in fiscal happyland.

When I was growing up I was taught to take accountability for my mistakes. Nobody these days seems willing to man up to anything.

When Bob Woodward's book "Maestro" came out, Greenspan didn't rush out to say "Aw shucks, I'm not all that oracular! Just doin' my job, and by the way, watch out for those developing economies in case they flood the world with money."

No, Greenspan like his pronouncements vague and obscure. "Irrational exuberance" and other coded phrases that defied analysis. Now, when his penchant for "free" markets and especially for deregulation have blown up in his face, Wile E. Coyote wants us to believe that he was never after that darned Roadrunner at all. And there will be no shortage of two-dimensional cartoon minds to get on the popular media outlets to tell us that yes indeed we can trust Alan Greenspan instead of our lying eyes.