Alien Greedspin
I’m not reasoned and impartial about this Randian idiot who was a major factor in the mess that is the current US economy.
The Houston Chronicle tells us that Greenspan questions McCain’s tax cut proposal
WASHINGTON — Alan Greenspan says the country can’t afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending.
“Unless we cut spending, no,” the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked McCain’s proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.
“I’m not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money,” Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. “I always have tied tax cuts to spending.”
Yeah, well, except when the Shrubbery did it, because Greenspan knew that the supposed budget surplus that existed in 2001 consisted totally of Social Security trust fund money, and that tax revenue was still not in balance with expenditures. Those tax cuts were funded by FICA payments, not income, corporate, or capital gains tax surpluses. It was borrowed money and Greenspan went along with the lie.
Of course the mortgage crisis is at the heart of these problems, and the Financial Times notes Oxley hits back at ideologues
In the aftermath of the US Treasury’s decision to seize control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, critics have hit at lax oversight of the mortgage companies.
The dominant theme has been that Congress let the two government-sponsored enterprises morph into a creature that eventually threatened the US financial system. Mike Oxley will have none of it.
Instead, the Ohio Republican who headed the House financial services committee until his retirement after mid-term elections last year, blames the mess on ideologues within the White House as well as Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Congress passed the legislation, but the White House and Greenspan opposed it. They own the entire mess. Greenspan told people to get Adjustable Rate Mortgages [ARMs] when the mortgage interest rate was at rock bottom and could only go up. He encouraged people to make bad financial decisions.
8 comments
I don’t want to be King Of The World, but it sure would be nice to live in a place where I could be the premier grey-bearded WhoSaid on whom society lavished attention, adulation, and riches beyond measure regardless of the number of times I have been so abjectly, horrifically wrong – repeatedly – in the past.
I can dream, I suppose…
It is like the media pundits – the only ones you see on the talk shows are those who are wrong. If you have been consistently correct they don’t want you to give your opinion.
Greenspan survived by emulating Chauncey Gardiner and mumbling meaningless drivel that every interpreted as suited them. He followed the conventional wisdom path to fame and fortune.
He should have stayed a jazz saxophone player, he was actually good at that.
I couldn’t agree more. I watched at least 20% of my retirement savings evaporate yesterday while Greenspan pretends that he had absolutely nothing to do with the financial disaster we are now facing. All the big mansions I drove by last week in Westchester county NY last week are safe I am sure as well as all the private jets at the airport. The folks that made this mess are surely going to be just fine.
I don’t know, FM, they may have to let go some the undocumented “slaves” they hire so they can impress people that times are tough. The CEOs walk away with millions after destroying lives. People need to start going to prison, not into retirement.
I blame Greedspin for the majority of this mess. He didn’t let the free market work. Of course there was also an alarming lack of common sense everywhere. Not to mention the disappearance of good accounting practices. Why would anyone get an ARM or, yikes, a pay option ARM, when fixed rates were soooo cheap. Unless they couldn’t afford to own the home in the first place!
It’s going to get worse… for us regular folks anyway. It’s probably going to take another 4 years for housing to get even close to recovered.
And when the government does intervene, it’s always on the behalf of rich investors that made bad decisions. We can’t win.
I don’t trust any of the accounting I’ve seen by any corporation. They have been hiding liabilities for years and auditors and the SEC have been letting them get away with it.
The whole concept of a corporation is a swap – for limited liability the corporation has to accept regulation. When there is no regulation, there should be no limit on the liability. Corporations by their very existence distort the market. You can’t have a free market when corporations are involved, and you can’t have real capitalism.
The money everyone talks about being lost, never actually existed because it didn’t ever represent anything of worth, it represented a guess at what some people might be willing to pay for it, and the guess was wildly over-inflated as everyone on the inside knew. The problem was the curtain was pulled back to reveal to the “trick”, and no one was willing to buy it.
Yep, Greedspin is a no-accountant. For a good description of who he really is, locate a remaindered copy of Robert Reich’s Locked in the Cabinet and read about Reich’s conversation with Sir Alan while the latter… I am not making this up… sat eating caviar for lunch. Greedspin suffers a total disconnect from the lives of the people he so grievously harmed.
Hirsch over at Newsweek has a column that tears into him for this entire mess. Greedspin was given the power to do something before the situation was on anybody’s radar and did absolutely nothing. Bernacki had to finally write the regulations after he took over.
Sorry, I can stand the stuff, caviar. I used to go to parties at an ex-pat Iranian’s estate [business only] and he had the best black Beluga, but to me it was salty Jello beads. I ate one serving and thanked him profusely. Actually I only went because of some of the other food that I don’t even know the names of, but they were wonderful. [I think he was Bahai which was why he left]
He is a certified Villager, and has no idea what is going on in the country.