Phoenix Woman @ 95

Ayn Rand appeals to those clever-but-alienated junior-high-school kids who want to get revenge on all the other kids who beat them up and stole their lunch money. Fortunately, most kids like that gain both friends and a sense of empathy, and so usually grow out of the Rand phase by the time they hit college. Anyone who’s still a Randroid after college is either a trustafarian or an emotional adolescent (or both)

unless my memory betrays me,

alan greenspan visited the george w. bush white house more often than he had any other white house – by leagues.

he was, i suspect, cozened by presidential attention and power.

uncle alan was a dope, was conned,

and was and is a republican political operative.

we have not heard yet what clinton thought of greenspan, and we won’t for a while.

but i doubt the admiration is reciprocal on clinton’s part.

In particular, this passage jumped out: When speaking of the record number of mortgage defaults resulting from Greenspan’s Fed policy, and the fact that he opposed a proposal from Fed board member Ed Gramlick to examine lending practices:

Greenspan: “I thought that it…one would not be capable of doing what he was suggesting”
Stahl: “What of sitting on them, of taking some regula – what?”
Greenspan: “Well I think not”
Stahl: “Even if you even looked into it?”‘
“Greenspan” “Well I..there’s nothing to look into particularly, because we knew that there was a number of such practices going on but it’s very difficult for banking regulators to deal with that.”
Stahl (in narration): “He insists there’s nothing he could have done to protect today’s plummeting home prices, and the fact that a million families have lost their homes, and many more could.”

So according to Greenspan, it was a practical problem – the difficulty of “dealing with” predatory lending practices by banking regulators – that stopped Greenspan from acting. It just couldn’t be done. How could anyone have stopped what could not be “dealt with”?

As is always the case when right-wing liminaries like Greenspan are interviewed, nothing in Stahl’s piece ever questioned the ideology behind Greenspan’s refusal to consider regulation. There was a brief mention of his acolyte status with Ayn Rand, but no dots were connected.

So the fact that Greenspan’s personal ideology, not economic theory, not sound fiscal discipline, not even best practices – just ideology – drove him to remain hands-off in the face of clearly dangerous, even fraudulent lending practices – that fact was buried by Stahl’s interview.

Another disgusting display of feigned ignorance by our complicit corporate media.

Oh well. At least the millions of American taxpayers who lose their homes because of Fed policies won’t blame Alan Greenspan.

*In a just world Fred Goldman would take the money from the If I Did It book and take out a hit on OJ Simpson.

-GSD

*I am not actually inciting Fred to violence.

How do we know the Vegas job wasn’t a setup? It takes a particular type of stupid for a man to attempt to steal his own collectibles — and be in the same friggin’ town, when it’s done?

If Goldman went to the devil and asked for one more shot at putting OJ behind bars, I can’t say I’d blame him.

In early 2004 interest rates were at, ummm, generational, let alone decade long, lows. They weren’t going to get lower. Suggesting that variable rate mortgages would be a better idea, even with caveats, was immensely irresponsible and even cruel.

Oh yes indeed, Ian. It was Feb. 23, 2004. Compared to this one statement, my disagreements with Greenspan about his exercise of monetary policy are narrow and technical. At the time he said it, while I had been talking to every mortgaged friend and relative about locking in the best fixed rate they could get asap, I really began to suspect at the least an amazing degree of irresponsibility; if anyone googles about for reaction to Greenspan’s speech of that day, they’ll find plenty of outrage and perplexity. But considering also his Fed’s regulatory silence on the mass embrace of textbook examples of predatory lending, it is hard to remain as benign as “irresponsibility” in one’s conclusions.

Bear in mind first that the Fed has regulatory authority over some of the primary and secondary lenders that were involved in pushing these loans, and also has both co-ordinating ability among the other financial regulators, and a formidable bully pulpit—the same bully pulpit that Greenspan used instead to encourage the toxic loan pushers.

And second, who is it that controls interest rate policy again?