Greenspan's Folly

Remember the film, WALL STREET? "Greed is good". This is the real deal.

want to mess with the system? then the ONLY things you should finanace are your house, maybe some part of your education, and maybe the odd medical emergency. if you QUIT feeding the beast (after all, if you don't finance that brand new LCD tv, some *** bank can't take that loan and over-leverage it, same goes for your ginormous credit card bill), the beast will get smaller. STOP FEEDING THE BEAST!!!!

Greenspans fault??? Like Scooter Libby [who should be shot for treason] took the heat for Bush Greenspan is no different he only did as he was told by Bush to do. End of story!

Coincidentally, I just suggested to my wife an hour ago that Greenspan had to take the blame for much of this fiasco. He's an unashmed deregulationist. We bought our house in 2003. Shortly afterwards I rember Alan Greenspan saying that Americans were losing out on a fantastic opportunity by not taking advantage of the low interest mortgage rates offered by adjustable rate mortgages. I remember at the time thinking we'd made a terrible mistake by opting for a a 5.375%, 30 year mortgage. After all, this was the chairman of the Federal Reserve suggeting an ARM was the way to go. In hindsight, we made the right choice. I pity all those people who took his advice.

Yes, greed runs our country. And we all need to come to terms with and assess our own personal financial choices. But let's not be so quick to let those off the hook who have accepted positions that give them significant power, influence, and responsibility (as well as the perks) to oversee the financial health of our country. If we DON'T start holding politicians responsible for what they're being paid very handsomely to do, we can expect continued decline in this country.

Wow. I've been waiting what seems like forever to uncover Mr. G for what he truly is. He has led us int othis complete debacle and since his retirement has tirelessly undermined his hand picked successor in countless efforts to sell his two books. Absolutely shameless, from the man who talked like a church mouse in his tenure, but has now turned "Hollywood". Mr. Greenspan pls just go away and soak in your tub of goofiness.

I have an idea, how about we blame it on the people who voted for GW Bush with double blame for those who voted to reelect him.
Bush/Cheney made it perfectly clear they would pursue Reagans economic plan, one of them I recall saying
"it worked for Reagan"

Reagan left office with 9.4 unemployment, the number of homeless tripled, and 1,000 Saving and Loans gone.
Bailing out the son of the VP Neil Bush, (Silverado S&L) to the tune of 68 billion, they deregulated the Social Security fund for the cash.
3.8 trillion now gone and no one seems to know where the IOU's are.

This Economic crisis is no different from Reagan's, why would anyone expect a different outcome if you do the same thing you did before.

This was predictable and predicted the very day GW Bush took office,
Hate to say I could agree with Phil Gramm, on anything but he called it right when he called people "a bunch of whiners.
It worked for Reagan and now it worked for Bush, you got what you voted for."

While I can't dispute your assertions, what strikes me most is the tone of your message. It feeds the fundamental need of our society to apportion 'ultimate blame' to someone else. It's time that we looked within ourselves and face the fact that we are all responsible for this financial breakdown. We buy stuff without the means; borrow without the ability to repay, and then blame someone else for 'letting us do it'. Grow up, and have the guts to tell your readers to look themselves in the mirror.

While I can not dispute the positions represented by your editorial, what strikes me most is the underlying tone. Namely, the need to assess 'ultimate blame'. By pandering to societies need to apportion blame to others, you reinforce America's fundamental weakness - the inability to take personal responsibility for our decisions and actions. We all bear responsibility for this 'folly'. We all spend beyond our means; borrow knowing we don't have the ability to repay, and then blame others for 'letting us do it'. It's time for someone to hold ourselves accountable for a change.

I think that the problem was really created by the Republican congress in 1999 when they voted along straight party lines for the Financial Services Modernization Act, which is also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act.

McCain was for it, Biden was against it, as was Dodd, the current chair of the banking committee. It's named after McCain's advisor Phil Gramm.

If I were Obama I'd be all over this. The same would go for any Democratic candidate that is running against a Republican Senator who was already sitting in 1999.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00105

In a letter to Congress on July 23, 2008, Ralph Nader warned that the federal government's bank insurance fund may be insufficient to handle the developing crisis in the banking industry.

The day after Ralph sent out his warning, he was ridiculed in Congress.

One member, Spencer Bachus, at a Congressional hearing, mentioned Ralph's letter and said point blank "Our banks are well capitalized, our deposit insurance fund is sound. There's absolutely no factual basis for saying that there's not money there to pay."

Fast forward to September 17, 2008, today, less than two months after Ralph sent his letter. The truth hurts, doesn't it?

What about Phil Gramm? Dismantling Glass-Steagall and pushing financial deregulation in the legislative branch. Both parties have people who took contributions and didn't do their oversight job, but the leaders in the whole "deregulation" thing were Republicans, including John McCain, who were committed to the whole notion out of ideology. McCain sounds like a Democrat now that things have come crashing down, but his voting record shows he's been part of the problem.

Deregulation by the GOP and President Reagan are mainly the reason for this turmoil we are now suffering. To take the depression era regulations that were in place, although stifling, protected the American worker's money! Greed, and the GOP's Party Affiliation with Big Business and ultimately ignorance, of a very fragile system that is only beginning to be understood, has placed this nation's financial credibility worldwide in jeopardy. To blame Alan Greenspan, for these woes, is only partly correct. The GOP needs to step up and realize that their decisions in the past are now haunting America. If John McCain can see the err of his ways in the past and NOW decide that regulation is the way to go to avoid abuses and bank failures like this in the future, then they can too! Right now, my money is on the Democratic Party and Barak Obama to help fix this crisis. Naive? Maybe, but it is born out of "distrust" in the current administration and the policies of the GOP!

Grenspan knew because he architected the economic stimulus of funding the shadow banking system with idle equity. He was the only one in the food chain that could have STARTED it.

Watching this unfold is right out of the plot line of a novel I read some months back called A Distant Crossing. I guess we can't always rely on the "smart guys" to do the right thing.

This whole mess is all about deregulation. Deregulation has been the clarion call of the republicans to woo the Wall Street white collar criminals into their camp. But, until yesterday, "deregulation" had been one of John McCain's Buzz Words for his entire life in politics. He obviously thinks we were all born yesterday.
And, Obama just doesn't bite hard enough. Why doesn't he go for the jugular? He should be making all the rest of those god damned republicans choke on that buzz word. We need someone who will stand up for us and defy sociopathic clowns like John McCain.
Why haven't any reporters asked McCain what it feels like to know that his drum beat for "deregulation" is finally bearing fruit! This is the brave new Republican Utopian Vision for our country!
After they've screwed up our money supply, what's next?

Lincoln Savings and Loan

The Lincoln Savings led to the Keating Five political scandal, in which five U.S. senators were implicated in an influence-peddling scheme. It was named for Charles Keating, who headed Lincoln Savings and made $300,000 as political contributions to them in the 1980s. Three of those senators - Alan Cranston(D-CA), Don Riegle(D-MI), and Dennis DeConcini(D-AZ) - found their political careers cut short as a result. Two others - John Glenn(D-OH) and John McCain(R-AZ) - were rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising "poor judgment" for intervening with the federal regulators on behalf of Keating.[10]