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Now he tells us!
Sunday, September 16, 2007
We are still on our way home, but this story about former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan just couldn't be passed by without commenting. 
From the man who encouraged the masses to take out adjustable rate mortgages and who lauded the financial innovations of subprime lending, comes this pearl of wisdom just prior to tomorrow's book release.
His publisher must be thrilled.
11 comments:
I'll bet the person who took his job is thrilled too.
What a f$@king shmuck
Pretty clearly he sees that the house of cards is now falling, and he wants to try to have his name clear when it all goes to hell.
Of course, he was a saint for the neo-cons when it came to dismantling our economy, but he can play innocent now. And, his words will in fact probably HELP hasten the coming 2nd Great Depression, and I'm sure he knows this.
Monday (tomorrow) might be an interesting day for the markets!
Yeah, the neocons, Ron, because all the Democrats of the last hundred years were actually hard money goldbugs who got run down by their Congresses. Or something.
Neocons, indeed. Which would also explain Al's rolling over on McBushitler. That's right, read further, it's all over the news: Al cites Bushco, The War For Oil, blah, blah.
Yep, Greenspan's now also a Truther, a maneuver sure to boost his flagging credibility. And book sales.
How gratifying that along with his prescient fiscal sixth sense, he also understands global politics with all the penetrating insight of a bowling ball...
be sure to check out todays post at Calculated Risk -- LOVE it!
Hey "anonymous" - I was just speaking of the current pirates at the helm, anonymous, so take a valium studmuffin.
The democrats have proven to be spineless twits lately as well. And of course the fundamental problems with our economic system really date back to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and there have been no innocents in the dismantling of our economy since then.
But you strike me as the type who likes simplistic views black and white "liberal = evil", "conservative = good"? "Us" vs "them". As America sinks into a 2nd great depression (possibly leading world into a 2nd dark ages) . . . we better stick together or Americans are going to slaughter each other like never before seen in history.
-Ron
No problem, Ron. As we (rather simplistically) "slip into the dark ages" again, I'll try and take a more nuanced view. ;o)
Actually, I'm substantially more thick-skinned; just wanted to point out that minor contradiction in your typecasting me.
The point is indeed that the political turf wars are what these liars and frauds in DC contend themselves with...hoping that a substantial number of us contend ourselves with them too. The 800lb gorilla has always been authoritarianism, not left v right, and about authoritarianism, fiat money is control.
Any people that willingly base their survival and livelihoods on the single biggest theft in the history of mankind certainly deserve to be made to consider that choice from time to time. I'd agree that we now are -- some of us -- and should continue to.
Tim is remarkably even-keeled about all this and my hat's off to that poise, certainly given his keen perspective. When the conversation finally takes a moral view of the fraud Greenspan has committed, as it should about the fraud the Fed and its enablers did nearly a hundred years ago, then we'll perhaps be talking about light at the end of the tunnel.
I don't think we'll die anything but a death of a thousand paper cuts. But I think at some point we'll hopefully consider just how we came to be in such pain and who specifically were the criminals who caused it.
oddly enough he seems to be supporting Bernake doing the right thing... no rate cut tomorrow?
Wow - "remarkably even keeled" - me-likey.
Just finished reading "American Theocracry" by Kevin Phillips. The wife was none-too-pleased as she was hoping for a fictionaal, Dan Brown-like diversion.
Aaron - re: Fed Funds rate, you be the judge:
08/01/2007, 5.30
08/02/2007, 5.24
08/03/2007, 5.24
08/06/2007, 5.26
08/07/2007, 5.26
08/08/2007, 5.27
08/09/2007, 5.41
08/10/2007, 4.68
08/13/2007, 4.81
08/14/2007, 4.54
08/15/2007, 4.71
08/16/2007, 4.97
08/17/2007, 4.91
08/20/2007, 5.03
08/21/2007, 4.89
08/22/2007, 4.77
08/23/2007, 4.88
08/24/2007, 5.11
08/27/2007, 5.27
08/28/2007, 5.30
08/29/2007, 5.00
08/30/2007, 5.00
08/31/2007, 4.96
09/03/2007, ND
09/04/2007, 5.22
09/05/2007, 5.18
09/06/2007, 4.98
09/07/2007, 4.86
09/10/2007, 5.07
09/11/2007, 5.06
09/12/2007, 5.18
09/13/2007, 5.09
09/14/2007, 5.25
Per the effective Fed funds rate, they've already made the cut.
Tim, Welcome back!
I'm already tired of the Anonymous vs. Anonymous Steel Cage Match of Incredible Boredom so I'll engage in a little gratuitous Greenscam character assassination!
To wit.
From GATA/LeMetropole Cafe:
The key to understanding Greenspan is to think of him not as an economist, as which he was always mediocre at best, but as a bureaucrat in a large bureaucracy, and in this he excels, and has the kind of power that comes with time-in-place. In this he is more like J. Edgar Hoover than Paul Volker.
Here is an anecdote from Pierre Rinfret, an economist and seasoned Republican who has known Sir Alan first as a colleague at Columbia, then as a fellow economic consultant on the Street, and as an associate in several presidential administrations.
"One of the absolute lies about him is that he retired from his consulting business a wealthy man. Absolutely and totally untrue. (His emphasis, not mine. Jesse).
When he closed down his economic consulting business to go on the Board of the Federal Reserve he did so because he had no clients left and the business was going under. We even went so far as to try and hire some of his former employees only to find out he had none for the 6 months prior to his closing. When he closed down he did not have a single client left on a retainer basis. His only source of income was his speech making. As a speaker he had to be the ultimate bore exceeded only by Paul McCracken about who Richard Nixon told me on many an occasion "When he talks MEDGO" meaning "my eyes doth glaze over".
"He had a horrible record on forecasting the American economy. He missed calling, in advance, every single recession in the entire postwar period with only one exception. He neither called recessions nor expansions for the very simple reason that he has never been one to stick his neck out. In American industry they don't pay consultants for Pablum or for saying what everybody else does!And that is what he has always served up; Pablum. The driving force that may push Greenspan more than anyone or himself realizes is that he graduated from the "Bronx High School of Science" and that his peers included one Henry Kissinger and other famous (infamous?) politicians of about his age. A classmate of his once said to me that Alan had to prove to them that he was as smart as they were!"
Can this really be how things happen, not with careful planning, forethought, and measured stewardship, but through old school connections, inertia, organizational politics, and serendipity? To anyone who has worked for any length of time in a large government or corporate organization, the answer is apparent.
Jesse
From a Feb 13, 2004 MIDAS (another Café member):
Mr. Rinfret's accounting of Alan Greenspan as private economic consultant with his defunct firm, Townsend & Greenspan, is stunningly consistent with what a good friend of mine from the University of Chicago, who knew one of Greenspan's employees at the time, told me back in the early '90's. To paraphrase my friend: Greenspan was the laughing stock of those who were serious econometricians and was notorious for horrendously incorrect forecasting. He also had told me that Greenspan barely had a pot to piss in when he was appointed to the Fed.
September 18, 2007 7:11 AM
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