The Lies of Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan has come back from the tomb of history to correct the record. He did not make any mistakes in his 18-year tenure as Federal Reserve chairman. He did not endorse the regressive Bush tax cuts of 2001 that pumped up the federal deficits and aggravated inequalities. He did not cause the housing bubble that is now in collapse. He did not ignore the stock market bubble that subsequently melted away and cost investors $6 trillion. He did not say the Iraq war is “largely about oil.”Check the record. These are all lies.
Greenspan’s testimony endorsing the Bush tax cuts was extremely influential but now he wants to run away from it. In the instance of Iraq, Greenspan is actually correcting his own memoir, “The Age of Turbulence,” which just came out. Last weekend, newspapers reported provocative snippets from the book, including this: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Wow, talk about your “inconvenient truth.” Greenspan was blithely acknowledging what official Washington has always denied and the news media faithfully ignored. “Blood for oil.” No, no, no, that’s not what he meant, Greenspan corrected in a follow-up interview (with Bob Woodward in the Sept. 17 Washington Post). He was only saying that “taking out Saddam was essential” for “oil security” and the global economy.
Are you confused? Welcome to the world of slippery truth that Greenspan has always lived in. He was the Maestro, as Woodward’s loving portrait dubbed him. Wall Street loved the chairman best because the traders and bankers knew he was always on their side and would come to their rescue. The major news media treated him like an Old Testament prophet. Whatever the chairman said was carved on stone tablets, even when it didn’t make any sense, as it often didn’t.
Some of us, who followed his tracks more closely, were not so kind. Harry Reid, now the Democratic Senate leader, said Greenspan was “one of the biggest political hacks in Washington.” Amen. I called him “the one-eyed chairman” who could always spot reasons to stomp on the real economy of work and production, but was utterly blind to the destructive chaos in the financial system. No matter. The adoration of him was nearly universal.
Until now. The economic consequences of his rule are accumulating, and even the dullest financial reporters are stumbling on crumbs of truth about Greenspan’s legendary reign. It sowed profound and dangerous imbalances in the U.S. economy. That’s what happens when government power tips the balance in favor of capital over labor, favoring super-rich over middle class and poor, then holds it there for nearly a generation.
Things get out of whack and now the country is paying enormously. A pity reporters and politicians didn’t have the nerve to ask these questions when Greenspan was in power.
He retired only a year ago, but is already trying to revise the history - to explain away blunders that are now a financial crisis facing his successor; to rearrange the facts in exculpatory ways; to deny his right-wing ideological bias and his raw partisanship in behalf of the Bush Republicans.
The man is shrewd. He can see the conservative era he celebrated and helped to impose upon the American economy is in utter ruin. He is trying to get some distance from it before the blood splashes all over his reputation. Of course, he also came back to cash in - an $8 million advance for a book that is sure to be a huge bestseller.
I don’t want to be unkind, but Greenspan could have avoided all the embarrassing questions if his book was posthumous. I haven’t read it yet. I have a hunch I am not going to like it.
William Greider, The Nation’s National affairs correspondent, has been a political journalist for more than 35 years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of “One World, Ready or Not,” “Secrets of the Temple” and “Who Will Tell The People” and, most recently, “The Soul of Capitalism” (Simon & Schuster).
© 2007 The Nation Magazine
And don’t forget who appointed this slimebag to the Federal Reserve, the slimiest of slimebags…Ronny Raygun !
“I worry incessantly that I might be too clear.” - Alan Greenspan
.
What Greenspan actually said.
“Look. . . It wasn’t the oil then, but it is now . . . Frankly, it doesn’t really matter how we got here, nobody lied and everything is everything.”
.
Greenspan and Kissinger both have written their most self-serving books to hide the lies and failures of their lives. For us it is not easy to avoid the scams, but we can try. For historians it is a lesson in knowing where to look to find the bodies
“Ronny Raygun !”
ZAP!
Wasn’t Greenspan a devotee of Ayn Rand and a flagrant Free Market advocate?
The sad thing about this commentary from those who may have been on the outs- but now proven right (like Nader):
http://www.commondreams.org/views/041800-106.htm
is that it is revealed now when the walls are tumbling down. Down the line comes another golden calf creation, like Clinton, that all will bow to, but will most likely turn out to be another false god. The obvious will become manifest–but still the well of illusion springs forth.
Harry Reid, now the Democratic Senate leader, said: “Greenspan was one of the biggest political hacks in Washington.”
Well it takes a genuine POLITICAL HACK to know a genuine POLITICAL HACK….
Greenspan is really saying,
NOW LETS SEE: I’ve been hiding the ARM’s under this shell and the CDO’s under this shell and the NINJA’s under this shell and Iraq’s OIL under this shell and the TAX CUTS FOR THE UBER RICH under this shell and my biased right wing political SPIN under this shell and other BULLSHIT stories for ignorant masses to pacify them under this shell and OOOHHHH SHIT my memory isn’t as good as it used to be….
NOW where did I hide the BULLSHIT again….hmmmm….did write it into the book or tell it to that irritating little bastard reporter from …..orrr I should have written it down…..
PS…
NINJA = no income no job and no assets
ARMS = Adjustable Rate Mortgages, otherwise known as “EXPLODING ARMS”
CDO = collateralized debt obligations otherwise known as “COLLATERAL DAMAGE to OTHERS”
Don’t buy the book, Don’t let any of these b*****ds further profit from the pain that they have caused.
“Don’t buy the book, Don’t let any of these b*****ds further profit from the pain that they have caused.” Says Idavin.
Quite right!
Why would anyone buy a non-fiction book from a known liar? It boggles the mind.
WOW and i thought I was the only one to think that Ronnie the dipshit Regan was the starting of the downfall of this nation.All the others followed and the more that comes the less intelligence they have. Gingrich was one of the people that assisted in the overthrow of our use to be duly elected officials.Then came the nasty five on Herr Bushie surpreme court to elect who the corrupt neo-cons wanted. Just think they even threw in girlieboy murderer dickieboy Cheney. The whole group sucks.
Greenspan and his ilk focus only on growth. We’ve convinced ourself that growth (reflected in kind by long-term stock performance) is the only economic good worth considering. Let’s not forget that when “wage pressure” (the income for most Americans) declines, the stock market goes up.
A true healthy economy includes low consumer debt, affordable necessities like food, shelter, and education, a high standard of living for a broad swath of the population, and many, many other things. It does not include just growth, for crying out loud.
Since productive (manufacturing and IT) backbones of many “American” corporations are now overseas, the stock market is arguably of declining importance with regard to measuring the quality of living of most Americans anyway.
I’m not sure what “growth” is. Is it supposed to mean getting wealthier — but denying the existence of a relative zero-sum game aspect to the economy, denying the gap between rich and poor, denying the fact that there are broad swaths of wage-slaves who’ll never get ahead — and that initially having money is more important than actually working.
considering the state we are in,it is easy to hate everyone.personally i feel some admiration for greenspan and it seems he is saddened about the bushes running amok..i dont think he deserves the blame,bush has been in office for nearly 8 years,the congress,senate and the citizens of america cannot control or stop the bushmachine,so i feel certain greenspan could not,either,every president since jfk,has been a talkinghead of the institutions that daddy bush has been running since ‘63.you dont really believe ronald reagan was calling the shots ?? do you ?? i was hoping greenspan would inspire others to speak up…but if greenspan gets abused by the very people(left and liberal)who stand to benefit by his being candid….well then,you know you should NEVER KICK A GIFT-HORSE IN THE MOUTH !!
Greenspan’s book, you watch, will be purchased in bulk quantities by various rightwing organizations and distributed as required reading material or gifts.
Today, the fed lowered the prime interest rate. Looks like we don’t have enough sprawl housing, er, I mean “garage with attached house” sprawling subdivisions profitably located in the middle of nowheresville.
“Rate-Cut Euphoria
Markets surge after Fed’s half-point reduction, its first in four years”
Oil will shoot over 100 in short order
Missing from the commentary about Greenspan’s comments is the fact that the democrats wholy embraced the Iraqi Holocaust project, and indeed started it under Clinton. The same goes for the bipartisan Death Party approach to Iran. I think Naomi Klein has hit upon the right formula for analysis; that others have mentioned war as the foremost reason for the existence of banks is another truism deeply buried (Read “Sinews of Power” for a great expose of the font of the State/War/Banking nexus). This same nexus arose in the USA after the Civil War, but was present to a degree after the Revolution. But it wasn’t until the end of WW1 that american citizens made the connection between the bankers and the reason for US entry into WW1–to guarantee the return on the loans made by US bankers to the UK, France and Russia. In the 1930s, brave congresscritters stood up to the bankers and weapons makers to enact the Neutrality Laws, which were smeared at the time and ever since as proof of our descent into Isolationism. It’s very informative to study the great amount of spin and ingenuity FDR needed to employ to wriggle out of them in order to engage the US in WW2. In essence, facism was fought over there so it could become established over here. That the facist forces in the US succeded in “turning” FDR is reflected in the how and why behind the dumping of Henry Wallace as Vice President for the 1944 election in favor of the easily manipulated, political machine hack Harry Truman. This can be further explored by viewing the relationship between Wallace–now Commerce Secretary–and Truman from 1945 through Wallace’s 1948 presidential campaign–an election Truman won by promoting and then exploiting the fear generated by his “War Scare”, which is reduced in history texts to the Berlin Blockade/Airlift that always leaves out the USSR’s motives.
A historical truism is that ALL Empires are evil. The US Empire is no different. One should expect a continuation of the evil until the Empire is rolled-back–a task that is now the responsibility of the world to perform.
Basically a fine seller of snake oil. The American economy and monetary system is based on trickery, and snake oil greases the machinery.
Greenspan apparently is saying provocative things in calculated soundbites in order to hype his book. Neither his book, nor his soundbites are news. They are PR, salesmanship.
Unfortunately, Americans spend most of their time buying products and reading about the pros and cons of various consumer offerings. Greenspans “news” and “biography” are probably pseudo-information or opinion which is being sold to the public, meaning that it is a consumer item. Not “news” or real “information.”
Americans are so caught up in talking about fictional news about entertainment and gossip that they no longer are able to tell it apart from more factual reporting.
Greenspan is marketing his memoir, his personality.
Well, if he can pull it off, and make it look exciting to the reading public, he will have proven that he’s at good at business as he was at keeping his job as a leading public official.
Unfortunately, this highlights another unhealthy trend:
The use of fame garnered during public service as a vehicle to earn huge sums by manipulating media coverage.
I think the public should get wise to this, and quit buying these biographies, written and signed by people recently in and out of high public office.
Greenspan’s best bet to snare readers and book buyers was to raise the possiblility of a looming recession. This part reminded me to the old Howard Ruff report. His publishers probably advised him on that.
If a disaster was looming wouldn’t YOU want to read a book by the consumate insider who could tell you when and how?
Zing! Zing! Zing! Goes the cash register at your local bookselling megachain.
Well, here we go! Another public figure who formulated folly enters the ripe years of legacy. He looks back and the undersized angel on his big shoulder says, “Hey, you really were a jerk! You coulda said NO and really done something with yourself — but nah, you loved the trappings of the position and all that celebrated power.” The angel fades away and the old, public figure reflects — “Maybe I can erase some of what I did and re-write who I was? Take the side of the angels and claim I was misunderstood by men more powerful than I. Or, maybe simply save my legacy by redeeming myself in my life story that’s now for sale?”
Mr. Greenspan, you and Robert McNamara seek redemption. Sorry, too little and too late. You had your chance and you blew it! There are fields of the dead and homes up for auction once filled by families gone broke and you and your types will always have to answer for this. The gates to where you wanna go are locked. Nice try!
I don’t know about you, but I kick a gift horse in the mouth when it bites my ass.
He could have influenced Bush more than any other American. All he had to do was be honest, and not fund bush’s shenanigans. It took 2/3 majority of the states to give the federal reserve bank its power. (It is a private institution after all) Bush would have been forced to follow whatever dictates it made, in order to keep interest rates low.
hmmm… of course! Its all a sham, this is exactly part of the plan. Bankrupt the nation, destroy the army, privatize EVERYTHING. Shock ‘n awe until we can do nothing more then watch football.
Let’s start the bidding for Yellowstone…
. . . and he’s married to journalist Andrea Mitchell? Is that correct?
Why wasn’t that told to us as Andrea Mitchell covered the Bush Administration?
Oh, that’s right, if you’re a White journalist, there is no way you could ever be biased toward your partner. But, on the other hand, if you are an Islamic photographer, you’d have to be up to your eyeballs in bias toward . . . (you finish the sentence.)
Just have to shake your head at the hypocracy! the injustice!
Greenspan, Kissinger, and others like them do not “write” non-fiction. Instead, they pen self-serving and predictable fiction.
When I worked at a library, our outreach collection (for shut-ins, the institutionalized, old folks homes, jails, etc.)was categorized as either non-fiction or fiction.
Me and my pre-nervous-breakdown colleaque categorized religious literature, political memoirs, and the like, as fiction.
After he had a nervous breakdown and consequently became a “born-again” Christian, religious materials, economic textbooks and political memoirs were recatelogued under non-fiction.
Porn (which was allowed reading material in those days) was still placed under non-fiction. However, porn’s (either as non-fiction or fiction) days were numbered.
Already, my “born-again” friend -in concert with growing numbers of feminists, was starting to censor porn.
I remember the eyes of both jailbirds and a couple of lesbian shut-ins light up when I brought them their latest requested issues of Playboy.
If you have noticed a lot of pundits,reporters and politicians have been rewriting scripts lately.
That is what people do when there on the wrong side of history, and the wrong side of public opinion.
Investigative reporting died in the Edward R. Murrow days. Nowadays in order to have a career at one of the alphabets you have to follow the script.
You must be wondering what does this all have to do with Alan Greenspan. I too believe that Alan Greenspan was a political hack.
In our corporate influenced government you cannot be a thinker for the people and still eat at the trough.
Power if not used wisely is egotistically intoxicating and morally corrosive.
War is good for the economy, is raises the price of weapons manufacturer stocks
sickness and Plague are good for the economy, it raises the price of medical insurance and Pharma stocks
Death is good for the economy, it raises the price of Funeral Service providers stocks
Unfortunately if the economy gets any better, there will be nobody left to enjoy it
Greenspan was nothing but a shill for international bankers. The current meltdown in sub-prime mortgages is only the tip of the iceburg. The US gov’t will come to the aid of the banks and their “liquidity crisis,” you can bet on it.
Greenspan was only doing what he was told as any good “public servant” should do. He was the mouthpiece of of the republican back room “boys”. As an aside,it is inconceivable that people would call Ronnie Reagan names, wasn’t he one of the the rock em sock em fightenist heroes of the second world war along with his buddies, Moses heston and the duke and other holywood characters? Wasn’t he the saviour of america exporting democracy all over the place with democracies front men the marines and army. Poor Greenspan didn’t have the talent to fight that good fight in holywood so he was put to use doing something similar on the homefront, revising history. Ah those republican worshippers of the Red Queen where “every word means exactly what I want it to mean”
if we are into bashing government goons hypocrits and lying avatars..my vote would go to a man i once liked..algore..nobody is getting richer than al off global warming..ole al knows about all the secret government experiments goin down in the arctic/but keeps mum..ole al used more electricity than a small city..till he got found out…algore is invested heavily in helping to deplete the resources and you can bet he is not against a new unfrozen shortcut for shipping cargo..algore said in 1992 that bush sr. should have attacked saddam.algore attacked our free speech long before anyone else….(reference, my favorite political hero=FRANK ZAPPA)
“Quite right!
Why would anyone buy a non-fiction book from a known liar? It boggles the mind.”
Because they are avid fiction readers, perhaps?
I don’t know about you, but I kick a gift horse in the mouth when it bites my ass.
________________________________________________________________________________
Hmmm… you must be a circus contortionist, or double-jointed!
federal reserve.. close to greatest scam of the 20th century.
greenspan is one of the world’s greatest sellouts to libertarian ideology. I cant say it was intentional, he seems just a useful dupe to me.
thought you might find something interesting.
a paper I wrote called “fractional reserve banking as economic
parasitism”
endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus
magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded
economics paper. used by economics
teacher in australia as standard classroom material.
more info on request.
“fractional reserve banking as economic parasitism”
http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wpawuwpma/0203005.htm
recent supporting material: “confessions of an economic hit man”
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251
John Perkins on “The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption”
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/05/149254
Video, senator/pres candidate Dennis Kucinich
at last years 2005 Monetary Reform Conference
http://www.monetary.org/video/kucinich/win_broadband.wmv
money as debt video by Grignon
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279
Hard to believe knowing Greenspans record as Fed Chairman, that in his younger days he was a big supporter of the gold standard until he become a servant of the beast, ( The Federal Reserve).
The funniest thing is that when Greenspan was a young acolyte of Ayn Rand his nickname was “The Undertaker”. Well, that’s one thing those lunatics had right.
Balakirev
For cataloguing purposes: biography is fiction; autobiography is fantasy; and memoirs are science fiction.
whitewatersally September 18th, 2007 3:20 pm
“i was hoping greenspan would inspire others to speak up…”
Me too.
Greenspan is still a demagogue to many, just as many others now appear to be trying to knock him off his pedestal. Just shows to go ya, “Please all, and you will please none.”
Greenspan was always a loudmouth know-it-all as an economist in academia… so they appointed him to the Fed to shut him up.
He made a career out of double-speak and gibberish and still seems to think that no one is to the wiser about him.
For 18 years, no one was ever sure of what he was saying, but he managed to baffle most everyone with bullshit and come out of it with all those people thinking he was a genius.
Just one more example of the gullibility of the human animal.
After all, some people actually still believe all the crap that Bush, Cheney and L. Ron Hubbard have spewed.
None of them has ever said anything as profound as some of the observations of Jean Luc Piccard… and he was a fictional character!
Greenspan was on Lehrer News Hour Tues. and will appear again Weds.
Among his most offensive comments Tuesday were: 1)Nobody listens to him anyway, so his support of Bush II (and his economic policies)couldn’t have helped Bush “win” either election. 2)If one CAREFULLY reads the transcripts of his testimony, his endorsement of the Bush tax cuts was not REALLY an endorsement at all and EVERYbody misinterpreted his comments. 3)Since the housing boom was international, it was obviously attributable to inflationary pressures beyond the Fed’s control. (’Course this ignores the fact that the problem was not really the housing boom, but the housing bubble, a phenomenon confined to the US.)
I’m sure more howlers occurred, I just can’t remember them all.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec07/greenspan_09-18.html
The first half of the Lehrer-Greenspan interview.
Greenspan was simply another way to destroy the people’s government and they certainly are succeeding!!!
The book you SHOULD BUY is Wm. Greider’s “Secrets of the Temple” . . . . about the Federal Reserve Bank which makes economic decisions for our nation which, rightly, our elected officials should be making.
Let’s also get back to, at least, having the Fed Chair come and go with new presidents. Greenspan’s reign has been very harmful; let’s not repeat it.
Question and challenge the Fed — and let’s STOP their rule.
LOL @ whitewatersally
I don’t come out and say this much, but I think you’re a republican operative sent to bring argument and strife to us progressives.
We should admire Greenspan and be resentful of Gore. If I thought you were kidding, I wouldn’t have called you out like that. But you weren’t.
First of all, Greenspan is backpedaling as fast as he can on this issue. He’s not ’speaking out’, he’s laying the road for the Republithugs to find their way out of the lies and spin they’ve told. It’s a big job, but he was starting it off right there. His problem is that he got called out on it by the (semi)liberal side of the media (and then the real liberal media (found on the internet)picked it up) instead of it just getting disseminated through the conservative social network like so many of their rationalizations do (when said rationalization would be too much for the country at large).
Even with the ‘oops’ of all this bad press, the meme is out, with it’s new context seeping into the minds of the populous. Pretty soon, there will be quite a few TV pundits talking about how only America-haters don’t understand why we need that oil, and that blood is not too high a price after all.
Regarding Gore: You sound like a mix between my favorite conspiracy theory site and Rush Limbaugh. In other words, you can have all the ideas you want, but the mixture of certainty and conviction is not warranted.
It doesn’t matter though, because I think you know that. -I- think you’re trying out some new propaganda techniques, like combining Republican Talking Points Memos with light conspiracy theory (which is typically associated with far-left individuals, though that’s a misplaced stereotype) in order to validate the Talking Points.
Maybe I’m wrong, it happens.
Either way, your points are convoluted, illogical, and based on misinformation.
Greenspan was on NPR yesterday and said he wasn’t concerned with the $$Billions we’re spending in Iraq but is concerned about the billions we’re spending on social-welfare programs.
It’s always entertaining to hear conservatives attack social-welfare spending while they glorify coprorate-welfare spending along with billions in tax breaks for the super-wealthy while our country is engaged in a “costly” and “endless” war on terror.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out how these conservatives have snowballed so many people into believing they are the party of “values”. Am I missing something beyond the greed value they embrace?
Greenspan is an ugly objectivist shithead…If there is a hell I hope he burns in the 7th level…
It is so good to finally see Greenspan knocked off of the pedestal. This guy never cared a twat about the average working person and was totally a gnome of the plutocracy that now controls virtually everything in this country.
It has been disgusting how the mainstream media over the years fawned on this guy whenever I turned on the nightly news or read a newspaper. He did nothing but accelerate the trend of reducing living standards and hollowing-out the middle class.
Greenspan and others of his ilk have absolutely no clue about the lives of ordinary people struggling economically. As far as he is concerned, they might as well be martians.