Posted on 10/24/2008 3:05:20 AM PDT by Born Conservative
Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said on Thursday the credit crisis had exceeded anything he had imagined and admitted he was wrong to think that banks would protect themselves from financial market chaos.
“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organisations, specifically banks and others, was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders,” he said.
In the second of two days of tense hearings on Capitol Hill, Henry Waxman, chairman of the House of Representatives, clashed with current and former regulators and with Republicans on his own committee over blame for the financial crisis.
Mr Waxman said Mr Greenspan’s Federal Reserve – along with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Treasury – had propagated “the prevailing attitude in Washington... that the market always knows best.”
Mr Waxman blamed the Fed for failing to curb aggressive lending practices, the SEC for allowing credit rating agencies to operate under lax standards and the Treasury for opposing “responsible oversight” of financial derivatives.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
(In other news)
"I made a mistake"--Napolean after Russia
"I made a mistake"--Custer after Little Big Horn
"I made a mistake"--Captain of SS Titanic
"I made a mistake"--Nixon after Watergate
"I made a mistake"--Kim Bassinger after Alec
"I made a mistake"--Marlyn Monroe after JFK
"I made a mistake"--Joseph Hazelwood of Exxon Valdez
"I made a mistake"--Reactor operator in Chernoble
"We made a mistake"--American electorate after Bush
I certainly have a reason for revolt or revolution. I’m a pretty conservative investor and my retirement account on paper, is down over 80,000 dollars. Maybe I ought to call Barney’s office and ask for an appointment. LOL, I’m not in his district much less his state. Which would be his out. But none of that doesn’t mean he isn’t responsible to some degree.
Frankly I don’t think I would get a word in edgewise if he did grant an audience. The blustering, dunderheaded, queer, certainly has a way with words, and will talk his way out of just about any scrape, but the final one, where a great many of us will have an opportunity to forgive his sorry fat rear end, if he continues to posture it’s Bush’s fault.
Is big Al going to be a man and pay for his monumental fu*k up?
Teacher, teacher, can a answer that question, please? Well, I know I can, but may I?
Join the club..
Don't worry OBAMA IS GONNA SAVE US!!!!!
Lyrics say "He's gonna change things...rearrange things...Obama's gonna save us"!!
Yippee, all hail Obamasiah!
groan.
He knew just like he knew that so many of the wonderful dot.comers during the Clintoon years were nothing but Liberal Ponzi schemes posing as businesses.
Which is why he came out with “Irrational Exuberance”.
Being Andrea Mitchell’s old boy toy, he didn’t have the honesty and balls to tell the Americans what was really happening with the Clintoon dot.coms.
So he coined the phrase “Irrational Exuberance”.
We are seeing and hearing something similiar from Biden re the testing of Obama. Biden got the crap scared out of him in the security briefing he went to. Then Obama’s response re what he would do re the possible happening, scared Biden even more. So twice he has mentioned the testing of Obama.
This item is meant to blame Republicans for the current situation. And just before election time....
“The last person on earth to realize it was the creator of the monster himself. To him I say “No $hit Greenie, I knew it five years ago.”
Absolutely, the Whoreacle from Omaha, and I decided at about the same time to dump any Fannie and Freddie bonds. I, also, got out of any mutual fund with more than a very small % of these junk bonds or big holdings in Fannie and Freddie stock.
If our search program worked and had a date search, I could tell you, when I did this and posted warnings about this pending sh$t storm.
In same time frame, I cancelled Brinker’s news letter and stopped listening to Bill the Head Pimp of Pimpco Bonds and Brinker. They were in bed with Greenspam and others pushing these bad investments as safe and wonderful investments.
Jake Reno and her henchwoman, Gorelicker, were threatening any bank/lending company which tried to do a good job of appraising homes and evaluating people for home loans. Red lining became green lining.
The mistake was not realizing that they would lean so heavily on government insurance and bailouts. If not for "regulation", they WOULD have been much more cognizant of protecting their own shareholders.
Sounds like the Clintonian, “Mistakes were made.”
No, it sounds like a Democrat congress whose guilt is driving them to blame anyone and everyone else they can.
Greenspan isn't the bad guy here folks. Hate to break the bad news to you.
As usual, it's the hypocritical and selfish Dems.
And start setting the building blocks for the next financial crisis to arise in 10-20 years.
Well the seeds of this disaster were sown on Greenspan’s watch, so he deserves a considerable part of the blame.
Once a puppet always a puppet!
I disagree. "His watch" doesn't mean that Chairman Greenspan had any authority to control bad practices in the securities market or alter government requirements forcing lenders to make risky loans.
It wasn't Greenspan who blocked Republican attempts to tighten lending rules. It was the Democrats.
Alan Greenspan is entirely innocent in this mess, and the Dems know it. This is nothing more than their usual projection, played out in senate hearings.
It's disgusting.
Alan Keyes hit the bulls-eye years ago when he said, "We don't have an economic problem, we have a moral problem."
The truth of these words will be acknowledged by all at some point, either in this world or the next.
That’s how I read it too, Ari.
Not sure how much Greenspan is to blame BUT the banks etc. just handed over the keys to the vault to any jobless or lying mortgage applicant, mortgage broker, etc.
He knew just like he knew that so many of the wonderful dot.comers during the Clintoon years were nothing but Liberal Ponzi schemes posing as businesses.
Which is why he came out with “Irrational Exuberance”.
and all their little chickens are coming home to roost!!!
His real mistake was keeping interest rates too high in 1999 and 2000, which helped slam down the economy and led to the situation where interest rates had to go very low.
All this finger pointing is going to result in more regulations that hurt the supply side of the economy and expensive demand side stimulus that doesn't work.
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