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Greenspan gallows humor
Monday, October 27, 2008
From Pat Oliphant at the New York Times comes this bit of Greenspan gallows humor (a big tip of the hat to MP). Apparently it takes a few days for this all to sink in...
Though there are no guidelines yet established for cartoons, it is believed that this will count as a "Greenspan Mess" sighting.
From Wikipedia:Gallows humor is a type of humor that arises from stressful, traumatic or life-threatening situations such as wartime events, hostilities, mass murder; often in circumstances where death is perceived as impending and unavoidable. It is similar to black comedy but differs in that it is made by the person affected.
Close enough...
7 comments:
great cartoon! a picture is truly worth a thousand words!
Jesse W.
http://www.subprimeblogger.com
Greenspan's sin was not deregulation. His crime was using his regulatory power to reduce interest rate to 1% in order to save his WallStreet piglets by inflating the housing bubble!
If he lives so long, I predict this cartoon will come true in one form or another.
He may not have had the power to directly deregulate, but from his bully pulpit he made his clarion call for just that. He railed against regulation, and strengthening the regulations that did exist. If that wasn't enough he also held interest rates artificially low for too long, and thus created the mess we're in. Off with his head!
Unfortunately for us, Greenspan still left out the most important reason for the problem - availability of CHEAP money - without which a lot of the risk taking would not be possible. When you mis diagnose the problem and fix the wrong thing, it will happen again. It WAS the Doctor (greenspan) in the FOMC conference room with a RATE CUTTER.
Yes, let's boil this down to blaming just one person - much easier for our collective conscience, I guess. After all, WE had nothing to do with this mess and SOMEONE has to pay.
Tim, this absoultely counts as a "Mess" sighting.
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