Friday, April 30, 2010

Greenspan Right 70% of the Time?

Last week Wednesday, former Fed chair Alan Greenspan testified in front of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The most notable quote of Greenspan’s testimony was when he claimed that during his tenure as Fed Chief he was “right 70% of the time,” meaning of course that he was wrong 30% of the time and admitted to significant errors during his tenure. Once considered the Oracle of the financial markets, Greenspan now comes across as a pilot who crashed a plane but now seeks rhythm because he flew the plane well while it was in the air.

One main criticism of Greenspan is that as fed chair he failed to see or protect against the asset bubble in the housing market the bursting of which contributed to the failure of mortgage backed securities that were a primary cause of the financial crisis. Perhaps out of contrition, in his testimony Greenspan moved away from his laissez faire philosophy and promoted regulation of “too big to fail banks” because “the productive employment of the nation’s scarce saving is being threatened by financial firms at the edge of failure, supported with taxpayer funds, designated as systemically important institutions.” Nonetheless, to have Greenspan, who along with Robert Rubin was one of the foremost proponents of deregulation in the late 1990s, recognize that reform is needed is further evidence of the necessity for substantive financial reform.

Further, as predicted, the Senate began debate on financial reform Thursday after several filibuster hiccups on Monday and Tuesday. With Senator Chris Dodd promising a bipartisan bill, it remains to be seen whether new financial sector reform will have any serious bite.

4 comments:

  1. Steve Newbold

    More regulation?

    I still maintain that "deregulation" has not existed in about 80 years.

    What's going on is painfully obvious. De-regulation was never a problem in the past, the same way that socialism is NOT becoming a problem now.

    Corporatism was rampant in the Republican Party and it's just as strong today in the Democrat Party. Despite what the media tells you there is no meaningful difference in the Republican and Democrat Party. Corporatism is always masked as "Deregulation" or "Socialism" to create this false left/right debate and mask the real issue.

    Republicans simply allowed Corporations to have absurd benefits to perputate fraud. This blog has already pointed out that, non-enformcement of common sense laws that allowed Corporations to make absurd bets.

    Thus a crisis was created.

    The solution to the crisis was of course to give the Corporations billions and trillions of dollars.

    But more importantly, what do these Central Banks think the solution is now?

    "GLOBAL GOVERNMENT!!!" MORE POWER!

    Please read this recent article to see what I mean, with regards to the European Central Bank.

    http://blogs.forbes.com/face-to-face/2010/04/29/ecb-president-favors-global-governance/

    Now lets look at the world from a macroscope. . .

    It seems to me, that everytime there is a "crisis". . .the end result is the same. No matter what the excuse is, the solution requires me and you losing civil liberties, and the elites gaining more control.

    9/11 - the Patriot, those in power can spy on us. Even today, we lose more and more civil liberties, because of the fake bogey man known as terrorism.

    Global Warming - this "crisis" of course requires that we give up our national sovereignty to a global government to solve this unproven problem.

    Financial Crisis - We need global government.

    And both Republicans and Democrats want it. Next time a Republican is elected, there will be a want for a "global coutner terrorist force" (i.e. GLOBAL POLICE in AMERICA).

    Immigration - For example look at the two solutions for immigration.

    We have the "profiling" idea by Republicans in Arizona, which is obviously a disgusting assault on the civil liberties of Hispanics. . . but the Democrat solution is a National I.D. card containing YOUR DNA, and an R.F.I.D. radio chip so you can be tracked anywhere.

    The reason for the national I.D. card will be so that immigrants can't get a job or go to school (thus making crossing the border irrelevant).

    Back to the article, the fact that Greenspan moved away from "laisefaiire" to "regulation" is proof in itself that the crisis was manufactured and designed to give the Central Banks and elites more power.

    So let me get this straight: Greenspan admits that he was for laisefaire (which, by the way, has NEVER traditionally meant, under any definition, that you allow fraud to be perpetuated by corporations, but now that is the precise definition the media has fed to us, and that now everyone apparently agrees with) and now seeks more "regulation" (which is the latest euphenism for a Global Government).

    The only real solution is that a third party (which would really, be only a SECOND PARTY), emerges and gives the Republic back to us, the people.

    But I gotta get back to studying for my Business Association Final.

    Adios.

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  2. Republicans simply allowed Corporations to have absurd benefits to perputate fraud.

    I hate to interrupt a lunatic rant, but how about an example?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Steve Newbold

    If you want an example, you'll have to look outside your precious Cable Media that lies to you every night.

    Here's one. . .

    "President Bush’s anti-small business policies began during his first week as president. The first thing he did to dismantle America’s small business programs was to remove the Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) from the President’s Cabinet. Then he began to cut the SBA’s budget and staffing more than any other federal agency.

    Since 2003, over a dozen federal investigations have been released, which have all found rampant and government-wide fraud, abuse, loopholes and a blatant lack of proper oversight in federal small business contracting programs. Several of the investigations found that the Bush Administration has diverted billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to many of the largest corporations in the world.

    Current federal law requires that a minimum of 23 percent of the total value of all federal contracts and subcontracts be awarded to small businesses. However, every year the federal government awards billions of dollars in small business contracts to some of the largest corporations in the U.S. and Europe."

    http://www.infowars.com/bush-dismantles-economic-programs-for-small-business-as-economy-continues-downward-spiral/

    Also, in 2007 the Bush Administration adopted a policy that will allow Fortune 500 firms to continue to receive government small business contracts until 2012. (http://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=592)

    So I guess Bush actually committed the fraud himself.

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  4. Steve Newbold

    Hmmm. . . .sure looks like to me that no matter who the president is, that president bows down to the corporations as their master.

    You can call it a lunatic rant all you want, since I'm sure that's what Fox News or MSNBC will tell you to think.

    But when you look at the facts, the Bush Agenda and the Obama Agenda are overwhelmingly more alike than they are different.

    They are just "advertised" and portrayed to the public in completely different ways.

    It's becoming more and more painfully obvious and the public is starting to wake up to it, and that's why all the main stream Republicans are losing these straw polls to Ron Paul.

    ReplyDelete