http://www.forbes.com/markets/currencies/2007/09/15/greenspan-bush-book-face-cx_pm_0915autofacescan01.htmlFormer U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has criticized President George W. Bush for paying too too little attention to financial discipline.
In a forthcoming book, Greenspan, 81, says Bush ignored his advice to veto "out-of-control" bills that sent the U.S. deeper into deficit. "Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences," he writes of the Bush administration.
The Republicans deserved to lose control of Congress in last year's elections, Greenspan writes in The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, to be published on Sept, 17. He charges that Republicans in Congress "swapped principle for power" and "ended up with neither".Greenspan said he never became part of Bush's inner circle, in which dissent from staff wasn't encouraged, and that his hopes that the Bush administration would become a "reincarnation" of the fiscally conservative Ford administration never materialized. But despite differences over economic policy, Greenspan said the president kept a promise not to interfere with Fed policy.
The former Fed chairman also writes that his 2001 testimony before Congress that was interpreted as an endorsement of the president's proposed tax cuts was politically careless. Greenspan, who was famous for his gnomic prognostications on the economy, now says his words were misinterpreted.
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