Greenspan:'Be honest.' Does this advice apply to himself, or to his likely

[AirAmFan]

successors?

From "Greenspan Urges Wharton Grads to Be Honest", at http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050515/greenspan_integrity.html :

"Greenspan reminded graduates that their greatest responsibility is to be honest and fair in their future business dealings. 'Material success is possible in this world, and far more satisfying, when it comes without exploiting others,' he said. 'The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.'

Greenspan urged the class to hold themselves to high standards and not to cut corners. He referred to the wave of corporate scandals in recent years -- including Worldcom, Enron and Tyco -- and said those types of problems make trust and personal reputation all the more important.... 'In virtually all our transactions, whether with customers or with colleagues, with friends or with strangers, we rely on the word of those with whom we do business,' he said. 'If we could not do so, goods and services could not be exchanged efficiently.'

Congress responded to the scandals by passing an anti-fraud law in 2002, known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Greenspan said the law appropriately placed responsibility for certifying the soundness of a company's accounting with its chief executive officer."

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The overwhelming personal hypocrisy of this Greenspan speech is best revealed by a passage from the final 1983 "Greenspan Commission" report on Social Security "reform", reproduced in Reply #1 below.

In this passage, Greenspan reveals he's aware that the 25 percent hike in FICA tax rates he's recommending for the poorest is designed to help hide then record $200 billion "Voodoo" deficits due to tax cuts for the wealthiest. Remember, Greenspan got where he got not because of any professional economic expertise but because he was Reagan's far-right chief campaign economist, and the source of the idea for cutting the top tax rate on the wealthy from 70 percent to 28 percent.

But one of the three men being considered to replace Greenspan (per today's CNBC "Question of the Day") has even more profound problems with the truth. The name of Martin Feldstein, now President of the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research, appears in a "BIBLIOGRAPHY ON SCIENTIFIC FRAUD", at http://www.albany.edu/~scifraud/biblio/A.htm . The "A" is for Karen Arenson, the NY TImes reporter who wrote a very unflattering article about Feldstein during the first Reagan campaign, where Feldstein worked alongside Greenspan. Twenty-five years ago, ultra-right economist Feldstein submitted for peer review empirical work purporting to show that Social Security depressed national saving (sound familiar?). When other researchers could not reproduce his results, Feldstein famously blamed 'computer error'. See Arenson, K. W. "Martin Feldstein's computer error." The New York Times 1980 (5 October): F19.

[AirAmFan]

1. In Greenspan's mind, the "Social Security Trust Fund" always was to be

built up by the trillions simply as a stealth vehicle for a massive shift in the federal tax burden from the very rich to the poor and middle class. Remember, Greenspan had been Reagan's campaign economic adviser, and had originated the Voodoo Economics plan to cut the top tax rate by 60 percent, from 70 percent to 28 percent. The "Social Security Commission" ploy allowed Republicans to draw attention away from the then-record $200 billion deficits largesse to the wealthiest were racking up, and misdirect attention to exaggerated problems 30 to 50 years away. (Sound familiar?)

Reagan, Greenpan, and David Stockman deliberately set the Trust Fund up as a slush fund for "tax cuts" for the rich. They raised payroll tax rates 25 percent to cut the top income tax rate by 60 percent. The "Trust Fund" was a gimmick to hide what they were doing, and it WORKED! They ALWAYS intended to spend the Trust Fund: that was its purpose. The "Trust Fund" ALWAYS was just a cleverly-camouflaged source of funding for regressive economics.

Here's a passage from the 1983 Final Report of the Social Security Reform Commission that shows Greenspan knew what he was doing. Reagan appointed Alan Greenspan commission chairman. Note the candor here in revealing that Trust Fund contributions have been used to offset part of the deficit in the general budget ever since Nixon. Note also that, although a clear majority of the Greenspan Commission wanted to halt this theft and set Social Security up as an independent entity, their opinions were buried deep in the report. Guess which side of this issue Chairman Greenspan, Bob Dole, and Bill Armstrong were on?

From the last sixth of http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/gspan5.html :

"SOCIAL SECURITY AND THE UNIFIED BUDGET

(21) A majority of the members of the National Commission recommends that the operations of the OASI, DI, HI, and SMI Trust Funds should be removed from the unified budget. Some of those who do not support this recommendation believe that the situation would be adequately handled if the operations of the Social Security program were displayed within the present unified Federal budget as a separate budget function, apart from other income security programs.Before fiscal year 1969, the operations of the Social Security trust funds were not included in the unified budget of the Federal Government... In 1974, Congress implicitly approved the use of a unified budget by including Social Security trust fund operations in the annual budget process. Thus, in years when trust-fund income exceeded outgo, the result was a decrease in any general budget deficit that otherwise would have been shown -- and vice versa.

The National Commission believes that changes in the Social Security program should be made only for programmatic reasons, and not for purposes of balancing the budget. Those who support the removal of the operations of the trust funds from the budget believe that this policy of making changes only for programmatic reasons would be more likely to be carried out if the Social Security program were not in the unified budget....

Those who oppose this recommendation believe that it is essential that the operations of the Social Security program should remain in the unified Federal budget because the program involves such a large proportion of all Federal outlays. Thus, to omit its operations would misrepresent the activities of the Federal Government and their economic impact.

Furthermore, it is important to ensure that the financial condition of the Social Security program be constantly visible to the Congress and the public. Highlighting the operations of the Social Security program as a separate line function in the budget would allow its impact thereon to be seen more clearly.

SOCIAL SECURITY AS AN INDEPENDENT AGENCY

(22) The majority of the members of the National Commission believes -- as a broad, general principle -- that it would be logical to have the Social Security Administration be a separate independent agency, perhaps headed by a bi-partisan board. The National Commission recommends that a study should be made as to the feasibility of doing this.*

* See additional views of Commissioners Ball, Keys, Kirkland, Moynihan, and Pepper in Chapter 4."

[AirAmFan]

9. .

[necso]

2. Chutzpah, defined.

...And so now he gets worried about his "legacy"? -- What chutzpah!

[AirAmFan]

3. You're right. It's CHUTZPAH, with a capital CHU. Just think of the millions

of hours of work by middle-class and poor people represented by the "Trust Fund" Greenspan ginned up. As the time (2018) nears to pay back the trillions workers have "loaned" to Congress, Republicans are scheming to push that date back, cut workers' already pre-paid benefits drastically, and sow the political seeds of the complete demise of social insurance as we know it.

And most people still have not figured out they've been taken! Many of them still worship Ronald Reagan as a tax-cutting saint. Greenscam's true legacy has to be by far the biggest and most successful "Long Con" in world history!

[snowbear]

4. Huh....

...."Greenspan reminded graduates that their greatest responsibility is to be honest"

:think: I think it was Greenspan's roundabout way of saying, "try not to be a lying son-of-a-bitch like me"

And :o :o :o ...Can you imagine what it must be like when Andrea Mitchell and that scrawny little... :hide: ....

...oh geez... :evilgrin: I'd better quit while I'm ahead..

:o What an image though! :puke: === ACK!! ===

[cestpaspossible]

5. What Patrick Walters fails to mention

is that Greenspan kept winking, smirking and laughing

"Material success is possible in this world, and far more satisfying, when it comes without exploiting others (wink) ," he said. "The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake. (chuckles and smirks)"

[necso]

6. Nice.

I especially like the usage of a type (nonverbal) of contra-indicators (in this case, indicators contrary to the spoken words) that often would not make it into a transcript (that is: gestures, background noises, inappropriate laughter) -- or at least into a cleaned-up transcript -- especially one produced by a favorable "reporter".

And I also like the image of this hypocrite giving lie directly (by his actions) to his statements at the same time that he makes them -- and in a way that plays only to the immediate ("in") crowd.

But when you are a hypocrite this large, often you grow to believe in your own bullshit (or at least seem to)... And this could be the case here.

Myself, I figure that if you are going to be a pirate, you might as well go whole-hog -- knife clenched in the teeth and the whole damn bit.

AARRR!

[AirAmFan]

7. ! That's Monty Python funny! Thanks. I needed that laugh

[AirAmFan]

8. 'Greenspan's Fraud:How 2 Decades of His Policies Have Undermined

the Global Economy' is a new book by Ravi Batra, the distinguished economist and SMU professor who coined the phrase "jobless recovery". The homepage for the book is at http://www.palgrave-usa.com/Catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1403968594 .

[Nikki Stone 1]

10. Kicking this link

:kick: