More Greenspan bashing

The Associated Press story below that showed up in the Kansas City Star over the weekend was spotted at Patrick.net this morning. Why didn't anyone tell me about this?

Any news organization that takes the time to go back and assemble quotes from The Maestro, helping out future historians by adding to the growing body of evidence as to the roots of today's multiple world-wide economic crises, deserves to be recognized here.

Analysis: Greenspan off the beam on subprime mortgages
The Associated Press

Critics contend that former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan pursued interest-rate policies that led to a speculative housing bubble while failing to use the Fed’s regulatory powers to crack down on abusive mortgage lending practices.

Here are comments made by Greenspan on housing and mortgages:

•February 2004: “American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage,” Greenspan said in a speech praising the benefits of adjustable-rate mortgages.

•October 2004: “While local economies may experience significant price imbalances, a national severe price distortion seems most unlikely in the United States, given its size and diversity,” Greenspan said, playing down the threat of a national housing bubble.

•May 2005: Greenspan said in a speech that he doubted there was a national housing bubble similar to the one in the stock market. But he said there were a “lot of local bubbles” in housing, and he called the pace of housing price increases unsustainable.

•July 2005: “A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the vast majority of homeowners have built up substantial equity in their homes despite large mortgage-market-financed withdrawals of home equity in recent years,” Greenspan said in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee.

•September 2007: “I was aware that the loosening of mortgage credit terms for subprime borrowers increased financial risk. But I believe then, as now, that the benefits of broadened home ownership are worth the risk,” Greenspan wrote in his recent memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in the New World.

•December 2007: “Cash is available, and we should use that in large amounts, as is necessary, to solve the problems of the stress of this,” Greenspan said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” He suggested the government should boost support to homeowners facing the prospect of losing their residences because their mortgages were resetting at higher interest rates.

Yes, the transition from "there is no bubble" to "we have to mop up the bubble" is really as effortless as it seems.

The search below showing various related news stories not in sequential order is actually pretty funny - revisionist history at its best.
On a related note, while poking around at Google, this popped up - resurgent John McCain's reference to his "Weekend at Bernie's" joke many years ago resurfaced in this report.

McCain Wants Greenspan, Dead Or Alive
PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. , Oct. 4, 2007 (AP)

Republican John McCain said Thursday that as president he would appoint Alan
Greenspan to lead a review of the nation's tax code - even if the former Federal Reserve chairman was dead.

"If he's alive or dead it doesn't matter. If he's dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him like, like 'Weekend at Bernie's,'" McCain joked. "Let's get the best minds in America together and fix this tax code."

The joke was a lot funnier before the latest in a series of financial bubbles burst.