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Alan Greenspan: "Oops."
Alan Greenspan says he may have been somewhat wrong all along about financial institutions' self-interest ensuring that they would never do anything as reckless as giving out loans to people that couldn't be repaid. He says maybe a little regulation might not have been such a bad idea after all. He is "shocked, shocked."
This is like St. Matthew coming down and saying, "You know that Gospel I wrote a while back? Never mind. My ideology was flawed."
The only thing more stomach-turning than following our 401(K)s down the drain is the spectacle of congressmen and senators, who a few short years ago were lining up to lick Greenspan's Guccis, now falling all over each other to get a few seconds in the spotlight to scold him. "Election's in a week and a half. Make sure you show my good side while I look stern and condemnatory."
CHAN LOWE
Comments
The thing that really gets me is how utterly similar this latest bubble was compared to all the previous ones. It would, in fact, be utterly trivial to put a complete and permanent stop to all future bubble-like activity (but, of course, stopping it wouldn't enrich big campaign contributors). The technique is trivial: Simply observe the trends in business. Is everyone piling on some new hot financial gimmick? Are consultants coming out of the woodwork to teach you how to get rich doing it? Then there is your next bubble. Whatever "it" is, if you just make "it" illegal and shut down all the activity, you will avoid that bubble. Repeat forever, and no more bubbles burst. Simple.
Posted by: Tom | October 25, 2008 9:33 PM
Alan Greenspan is not the one to be in the hot seat. He is only human and capable of making mistakes. Under pressure from the Republican Party he went along with the deregulation that brought about this disaster.
Rather attack the advertisers who prey upon people to buy up foreclosed homes from people victimized by the lack of regulation. The targets of this advertising are most likely ill equipped financially to pay the taxes, mortgages, and/or maintenance fees and so the cycle goes.
Deregulation is the reason our tax dollars, 700,000,000,000 of them were squandered in bailing out these banks which are responsible for the real estate melt down and, consequently, the melt down on Wall Street!
Posted by: Louise | October 28, 2008 1:04 PM