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!
