Chip, chip, chip at the clay feet of Alan Greenspan

[Algorem]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/3618477.html

By FROMA HARROP

Alan Greenspan may be "the greatest central banker who ever lived," two Princeton economists asserted last year. Worship at the Church of Greenspan had reached such a feverish pitch that when Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called the Federal Reserve chairman "one of the biggest political hacks" in Washington, even fellow Democrats shushed him.

It now appears that Reid has lots of company. Top economic minds are saying that Greenspan was not a great central banker — or even a good one. He was an enabler of the reckless Bush deficits. And their economic policy was designed to serve the appetites of adults living for today, and let the next generation be damned.

The cover of The Economist magazine has a cartoon of Greenspan handing the next Fed chairman a lit dynamite stick representing the economy. Greenspan's legacy, the magazine says, will be "the biggest economic imbalances in American history."

Paul Volcker, who preceded Greenspan as Federal Reserve chairman, says there is now a 75 percent chance that America's two monster deficits — the budget and trade deficits — could "wreck the international financial system" in the next few years...

[Justitia]

1. That was one of the truest things Harry ever said. Whoever thought

Greenspan was beneficial in anyway whatsoever for our economy missed a few classes in college.

[Vincardog]

2. Well I didn't see that coming

Greenspan is bailing while he can still hope to escape the fallout from his disastrous fiscal policies. He and the NeoConvicts hope there will be Democrats in charge when the piper comes to be paid.

[Lasher]

3. I'm glad some people are stating the obvious

Greenspan seemed fairly responsible, until the bush cartel came along. Then he totally whored himself out to their ideological obsessions. Remember Greenspan agreeing with Dubya, that we needed to do something about that pesky Clinton surplus? You know, the one he had worked with Clinton to build up so that we wouldn't have to 'reform' Social Security and other social programs. And how about Greenspan's support for the phony trickle down theory? That lie is such a lame excuse to find moral justification for stealing from the poor and giving to the rich!

And how about that bush economy? You would think that the worst deficit spending in history would at least produce some short term economic advantages. But nooo, their bullshit economic 'policies' are such a colossal failure, even their deficit spending can't provide a smokescreen.

Pant, pant. Hold my hand, breathe in, breathe out.

[ixion]

4. Greenspan choked the dot com boom, IMO

it was 98, and there was NO inflation, and yet they started raising rates to 'head off' inflation that didn't exist. The repeated this until the venture capital dried up, and then started lowering it once * was elected.

I could be wrong, but that's the way it seems to me.