False Hustle (Free subscription) | 04/01/2009
Digby makes an important point about Alan Greenspan and his Epic Fail : He is one of the reasons I no longer have any trust at all in the great man theory. I know that people need heroes, but in our celebrity worshiping culture we take it to such ridiculous extremes that it turns dissent and questions into heresy. I no longer find it particularly useful to think in those terms much at...
One Citizen Speaking... (Free subscription) | 03/01/2009
Artificially low rates … We have long maintained that the current credit crisis had its roots in Alan Greenspan’s decision to keep the Federal Funds rate artificially low as a partial solution to the bursting of the “dot com” bubble;...
IPE Journal (Free subscription) | 03/01/2009
With only a couple of weeks left in office, Hank Paulson has been busy holding interviews to make his views on the financial crisis clear. Here he is explaining how the Treasury lacks sufficient authority to deal with financial crises. Here he is again two days later explaining how macroeconomic imbalances are the true, underlying cause of our recent financial mess. (For a basic run down on the imbalances...
Crunchy Con (Free subscription) | 02/01/2009
In 2005, a Cassandra named Raghuram Rajan pooped in the punch bowl at an elite celebration of Alan Greenspan's genius: To outline his fears about the U.S. economy, Raghuram Rajan picked a tough crowd. It was August 2005, at an...
Le Monde diplomatique (Free subscription) | 01/01/2009
In his book The Age of Turbulence. Adventures in a New World (Penguin, New York, 2007) Alan Greenspan justifies his action in support of the property boom (p. 233): “I was aware that the loosening of mortgage credit terms for subprime borrowers increased financial risk, and that subsidised home ownership initiatives distort market outcomes. But I believed then, as now, that the benefits...
CJR Daily (Free subscription) | yesterday
... production values... In the second part of the series, the Journal istas put blame on regulators, Alan Greenspan, the credit-ratings agencies, and the complexity of securitization. Kansas is certainly right here when he says: The regulators were too interested in watching Wall Street succeed and going from riches to riches. But that doesn't mention that there was a distinct ideology,...
Scotsman.com (Free subscription) | yesterday
ECONOMICS, it seems, has very little to tell us about the economic crisis. Indeed, no less a figure than the former United States Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, r
Acronym Required (Free subscription) | 06/01/2009
House of Mirrors The unraveling of the financial economy shocked many who predicted endless prosperous times for unregulated capitalism in its zenith. Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin scratched their heads with airs of befuddlement. However others weren't surprised. Some Chinese now recall how they were compared derivatives to mirror images...
Fool.com (Free subscription) | yesterday
... a Japanese deflationary gauntlet Zimbabwean hyperinflationary war. Please, Ben, don't repeat Alan Greenspan's mistake of leaving rates too low for too long.Up the gas taxRaise taxes during a recession? Am I insane? Perhaps, but here's a parallel to draw: Cheap gas that'll help consumers rebound in 2009, just as lower interest rates was the hidden "help" consumers needed to fuel their...
The Street (Free subscription) | yesterday
... proportionately to productivity. However, the policy-makers, especially the former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan loved to see the rise in productivity but not in the real wage. As a result, the hourly minimum wage, which peaked at $10 in 1969 in terms of 2008 prices, is now less than $7. Incidentally, the unemployment rate in 1969 was just 3.5%. With the real wage trailing productivity,...
JasonKolb.com (Free subscription) | yesterday
... with blame here, yet I don't know of a single person who said "yeah, I messed up" except for Alan Greenspan. Plenty of Senators helped bring you this mess, yet nobody mans up. Cowards. All of them. Hearing "I'll take care of that, I will own it" is one of the most refreshing things I ever hear. My respect for the person who says it instantly ramps. Unfortunately hearing it is far...
Firedoglake (Free subscription) | 06/01/2009
Henry Paulson reveals the cause of the financial crisis: greedy investors. The Financial Elites had nothing to do with it. Alan Greenspan thinks otherwise.
Asia Times (Free subscription) | 05/01/2009
The US Federal Reserve era under Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, with their belief that central bank monetarist measures can indefinitely perpetuate the business-cycle boom phase, proved only that mainstream monetary economists read the same books. As the world is discovering, Milton Friedman's mantra that "only money matters" turned out to be a very dangerous slogan. - Henry C K Liu...
Fortress Of Fortitude (Free subscription) | 05/01/2009
A big hello to all our friends out there in Internet-Land! The Keeper hopes everyone enjoyed their holiday break. The Fortress Family spent plenty of quality time together and the economic downturn provided ample reason to stay away from the local Mega-Mall. (We know Alan Greenspan wouldn’t approve of our penny-pinching ways, but blogging about comic books [...]
Contrarian Musings (Free subscription) | 06/01/2009
... the credit crisis on global imbalances. Specifically, he repeated a storyline popularized by Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke: that a global savings glut (otherwise known as an imbalance) pushed interest rates down around the world and drove investors toward riskier and more leveraged investment activities. If we live in a global economy, and I think everyone would agree that we do,...
