Greenspan reflects on crisis, deflects blame
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Police in the Rayburn House Office Building had been planning an evacuation drill for Wednesday morning, but they called it off after realizing that it would interrupt Alan Greenspan's testimony to the commission investigating the financial meltdown.
The cops needn't have worried about involving the former Fed chairman in the evacuation: Greenspan is a master of escape -- particularly escaping blame.
As Fed chairman, he reassured policymakers that everything was fine as he presided over the housing bubble that led the world economy off a cliff. Now we know that everything wasn't fine -- Greenspan himself called the financial crisis "the most severe in history" -- and the 84-year-old wise man is claiming he knew it all along.
"I warned of the consequences of this situation in testimony before the Senate banking committee in 2004," he informed the commissioners Wednesday. "In 2002 I expressed concern . . . that our extraordinary housing boom, financed by very large increases in mortgage debt, cannot continue indefinitely."
While finding himself blameless, he assigned fault to, among others, Congress, the Bush and Clinton administrations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Europeans, other regulators, and one of his Fed colleagues. They all contributed to what Greenspan, in his testimony, called "the most prominent global bubble in generations."
It was, as the commission chairman, Phil Angelides, suggested, an elaborate case of "rewriting or forgetting history." In fact, the Maestro spent a good bit of time fiddling while the bubble inflated. more...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/07/AR2010040704021.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
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