Wednesday, May 13, 2009

A Shameful Performance, Mr. Greenspan

Recently Alan Greenspan addressed the National Association of Realtors (they should be tarred and feathered for inviting him to speak) and Mr. G. attempted to distance himself from culpability for the housing bubble. He offered the usual Greenspan gobbledygook about long-term rates and overnight-rates and he then had the temerity to suggest that history is somehow being revised to portray him in a less than favorable light.

As a sure senility sign, Greenspan goes on to say he sees "seeds of bottoming" in the US housing market. I don't suppose he caught the numbers just reported today (and known for a while) that home prices have declined by another 14%!

He followed that statement with an even more asinine one in which he asserts that the economy has been "otherwise running extraordinarily well in recent weeks." I guess losing a net 500,000+ jobs last month is just hunky-dory as are the anemic retail sales just reported, or empty freighter ships sitting idle, clogging up Asian ports. Has this guy just dropped in here from Mars?

The fact is that Greenspan was a central player in the financial debacle that we are all now living through, yet he refuses to accept responsibility for anything like that. I'll admit that he wasn't alone in pursuing disastrous policies, and in making it easy for Wall Street et al to create exotic mortgage-backed securities in ever increasing, risky volumes, on very shaky fundamentals. But his refusal to stand there and have the fortitude to say, "I was wrong, I goofed and I'm sorry about it," makes me want to regurgitate. It also tells me that this guy is so out-of-touch with what is going on today that he isn't qualified any more to teach even a kindergarten class.

I try not to be a hypocrite. I have made at least a hundred bad decisions in my business career but I believe that each time I made a mistake, I stood there and took the medicine. Mr. Greenspan needs more than medicine...he could use a lobotomy.

If you want to read the short (disgusting) Wall Street Journal article about all this, just follow the link below.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124215788386911895.html

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