Posted on 10/20/2013 3:38:49 AM PDT by lbryce
Complete Title:Alan Greenspan: What Went Wrong The Former Fed chairman on Where the Economy Went Wrong, Where He Went wrong—and Ayn Rand.
Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, goes to a lot of parties. He and his wife, the TV journalist Andrea Mitchell, "sort of get invited everywhere," he says, sitting in front of the long bay window in his office on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. Lately, though, cocktails and dinners seem to have guest lists drawn almost exclusively from one political party or the other. "It used to be a ritualistic 50-50 at parties—the doyennes of culture and partying were very strict about bipartisanship," he adds. "That doesn't exist anymore."
In his new book "The Map and the Territory," to be released on Tuesday, Mr. Greenspan, 87, goes on a hunt for what has gone wrong in American politics and in the U.S. economy.
He doesn't blame the current administration for today's partisan divide. The culprit? "It's the benefits," he says, pointing to the disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over how to deal with the growth of entitlements. In the book, he also ponders why the Fed failed to predict the financial crisis, where he himself went wrong and how that discovery has completely changed his worldview.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
When things are riding high and everything is going far beyond your wildest dreams, it is not part of human nature to question the good fortune, boom times, all that seemed to be going right because, we all, particularly Mr. Greenspan, believed it was all part of the economic cornucopia that was the American dream.
Reading through the article I got the impression that Greenspan really didn't know what he was doing, that he simply happened along at the most lucrative period in American history that would remained essentially the case no matter what decisions he made. The worst, most tragic mistake was that he believed he knew what he was doing and took the accolades, credit for it all, until it ended, circumstances which made him all the more confused and baffled, and along with it unanimity in which he was discredited, blamed for what happened.
Now, he's back trying very hard to concoct the unseen economic mechanisms that were lurking in the darkness in desperation to restore of his vainglorious ego in the hope he can exonerate himself. But, my sense is that he doesn't come across very convincing.
I've been in FreeRepublic for a few years, and in all that time I've read perhaps hundreds of 'after the fact' "reports" of what;
went wrong, went right, could have been, should have been
etc. .... you get the picture.
....and it is always ... after the fact.
The men that initiated the momentum that birthed the United states were sober and wise and really DID have a good idea ... and they really believed men would follow them and produce the greatest land on the planet.
We've apparently devolved from wisdom to mediocrity to cartoon because people supposedly wise ... are not ... supposedly capable ... are not ... supposedly mature ... are not.
Sadly ... men that were supposed to be religious ... are not and THAT is the root of our downfall.
We no longer believe in God (as a nation), for if we did, we would HAVE the spirit of discernment and KNOW whom to elect and whom to eject.
I believe we'd also have the righteousness of God in our hearts as we warred against the enemies of America.
As it is ... we do nothing ... we are dead and don't know it ... or we DO know it ... and don't care.
God have mercy and help us our unbelief.
Greenspan acts as though he himself discovered the role of human nature in economics. This is the arrogance of most economists who consider their discipline a ‘science’. Human systems cannot be forecast with any precision solely by mathematics. It’s like a meteorologist who never looks out of the window.
He seems to have learned little from his friendship with Rand. I never bought into her Objectivist philosophy, but her insights into and portrayal of the grubbing nature of moochers and politicians is dead on and timeless.
...sorry for typo...conscience...
5.56mm
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I got the same impression. All those models they used don't work. And Ayn Rand philosophy of the irrational side of human behavior all of a sudden seems full of wisdom and was right after all. He's shock he could have been so wrong! I wondered if he see the mistake he made in marrying Andrea Mitchell.
Ayn Rand used to call Alan Greenspan “The Undertaker”. That was when he was in his twenties.
Usually you can judge a man by whom he marries.
Yeah .. I noticed ... don’t know where the dupe is.
Sorry, thread has been pulled - can’t see what you wanted to show me.
Young Andrea Mitchell “latched” onto old man Greenspan knowing that by doing so, she was elevating herself socially and politically from an OK journalist to the “wife of the Chairman”. Nuff said...
Can you expand on that theory, at least in terms of Greenspan and what can be said about other scenarios? What about a woman, how can she be judged?
I recall widespread concern and near-panic in many circles regarding the very obvious distortion and misallocation of the housing sector from 2003 - 2007, begging him to back off the rate stimulus before the bubble inflated to dangerous proportions. This he did not do until derivatives started to unravel due to “unanticipated” defaults and he over-corrected even at that, making a bad situation with largely speculative, interest-only ARM loans even more dire.
I recall thinking at the time that the old fool really never got over Ayn Rand as most students enamored of her writing do after entering adulthood, and that he was intentionally doing this in a mistaken attempt at crashing the insufficiently libertarian old economic order.
I recall hearing Bernanke prattling on about inequitable distribution of incomes during his confirmation hearings, and knew then that the socialist eggheads had seized the reins.
Greenspan was and is a fool, but a lucky one. Well, with one exception. Angrea Mitchell. Being married to that sour harridan has to be pure living hell.
Had he adhered to the precepts of the Randian school of thought, which he embraced as a young man, we mightn't be in the fix we're in.
He could see her face and hear her voice - it should have been obvious.
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