Saturday, October 25, 2008

Greenspan... My Bad


During his run for the presidency in 2000, John McCain was drilled by a reporter about what he would do as president if something happened to then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

McCain, a self-described don't-know-much-about-the-economy, grinned and said.... "Well, I'd put sunglasses on him and prop him up like that guy in Weekend at Bernies."

Well "Bernie," who retired in 2006, was back on the Hill this Thursday where he told a Congressional committee that the economic crisis had shaken his very understanding of how markets work, and agreed that certain financial derivatives should be regulated... this from the anointed financial Maestro who heretofore vigorously resisted the "r" word.... "Greenspan Says He Was Wrong on Regulation." the Washington Post headline blares.

Greenspan's admission stuck at the very core of "trickle-down" Reaganomics as he lamented.... "I made a mistake, in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."

Bernie thought unfettered, unregulated investment bankers and Wall Street would stifle their greed. Would let the obscene profits in their sticky palms trickle down to the middle class. Excuse me.... hah, hoo, hoo, hah, hah, hah.....!

Greed is the fairy-dust of Reaganomics. Greenspan's apparent successes in managing the economy from 1987 to 2006 were in fact illusory.... they came at the cost of building the biggest credit bubble in world history.... and the bubble has now burst.

Bernie actually saw it coming. Greenspan warned in his 2007 memoir that Washington was now "harboring a dysfunctional government.... Governance has become dangerously dysfunctional."

Now we're living with the shambles the Decider has wrought with his dysfunctional government.... a dysfunctional, deregulated, deficit-mushrooming disaster.

A stubborn McCain is now no longer interested in putting sunglasses on Bernie and propping him up since Thursday the genuinely perplexed Greenspan was hard-pressed to explain how formerly fundamental truths about how markets work could have proved so wrong.

McCain doesn't want to hear it. He's taking back the sunglasses and deserting Bernie.... he wants to ignore the demise of Bernie-Reaganomics and party on with Bush's economic agenda of tax-break-for-corporations and trickle-down lots-a-luck for the middle class.

November 4. Vote. It matters!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Regarding Alan Greenspan’s remarks last week at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform who stated – “Free markets did break down. That, as I said shocked me. I still do not fully understand what happened”.

Kind of reminds me of the line that Captain Renault [Claude Rains] said in the film Casablanca---

““I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling's going on here”” (““Here are your winnings, captain!””)

Old Ed of the Delta

Seven Star Hand said...

Hey TH,

Here some more truth, hiding among the shrubs and bushes.

So, why should all of humanity be forced to suffer and struggle any longer, now that the entire global financial system has been exposed as a mind-boggling deception within many other deceptions? No one in their right mind would continue to be enslaved by a proven deception, which is also proven to be undeniable slavery-by-proxy !!!

The derivatives scams alone have grown to more than 10-times the entire global GDP (at last counting) and are now failing because the scam/pyramid scheme broke and exposed the deception for all to see. A significant portion of global wealth and power was created and propped-up using these and other now-proven smoke and mirrors and house of cards illusions and delusions.

These deceptions have grown many times larger than the rest of the entire world economy. Consequently, there is no way that all of the world's governments combined, who themselves borrow so-called "money" from other central-bank smoke and mirror deceptions, can solve this debacle, by using more smoke and mirrors money scams. The only solutions they are offering will take centuries to repay, if ever.

Here is Wisdom...