Is Greenspan a "Hack"? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

KMA-628 · 03-03-2005, 06:37 PM

Well, I'm not the biggest fan of Alan Greenspan, he has pulled a couple of stunts that have made my blood boil.

On the whole, however, I think the guy is pretty sharp and nows what the hell he is doing.

Also, I find that criticisms of him usually come from the party that is most negatively affected by what he says or does. If he says the deficit is our biggest concern, the Dems love him and the Republicans blow him off. Conversely, if he says anything remotely positive about privatizing Social Security, the Republicans sing his praise and the Dems say:

Quote:

I think he's one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington

LINKY

By the way, good ol' Harry Reid is the one who is quoted above.

Side note: What's up with him. Daschle gets run out and this guy takes the reigns. I remember reading the comment thread on Fark about the Democrats response to the State of the Union--even the liberals were bashing him.

Anyway, what do you think? Hack or not? Considering this guy has served both Republicans and Democrats for years and years, I would be interested to see people's take on him.

Like I said, for the most part, he is impressive (i.e. warning about the dot.com bubble long before it burst). But sometimes, I wonder about things he does (raise rates right before the end of the year--that made some mortgage rates take a hike up and banks made a ton of money).

jorgelito · 03-03-2005, 07:20 PM

*scratches head*

He's sort of an institution, kind of Merlin-like, very mysterious. Usually, I don't really understand what he says until someone interprets it.

Generally, I am under the impression that he's doing a good job, done a good job, but I am not an economist. As for personal opinion, I would say depends on whom you ask. If you did well while he was around, you probably like him. If you've been laid of dozens of times or whatever can be attributed to him, you probably don't think he did a good job. Kind of like your Rep vs Dems comparison.

It's hard to quantify what he did for me: His raising of interest rates increased my student loans. Since I haven't bought a house yet, I did not benefit from when he lowered interest rates. I don't freak out too much cause I figure it all rolls around eventually.

martinguerre · 03-03-2005, 07:22 PM

i used to respect him a great deal...he insisted on political independance, and that lowering the deficit, and hopefully later the debt, was the path to long term fiscal stablity for the nation. he seemed to lose a lot of that with W... Greenspan famously hiked rates against the wishes of Bush Sr, which helped to elect Clinton in 92... but this time around, he seems to parrot the latest lines. i dunno if his replacement canidates will be any better. volker doesn't seem to want the job back...and he's the only one who really comes to mind.

guy44 · 03-03-2005, 07:23 PM

Reid really isn't telegenic. I mean, he's Anna Nicole Smith bad, just in a very different way. But he's gotten the Dems to get their shit together and really brought strength into a leadership position that I felt was always inadequately filled by Daschle. I'll admit, though, I thought Reid would suck. I stand corrected. As for Greenspan, I think what Reid was referring to is this:

Quote:

What on earth is going on here? Alan Greenspan testified before Congress today about the supposed financial crisis on the way, and tried to place the blame on squarely on Social Security obligations. He also talked about a number of fiscal restraints that Congress had imposed in the 1990's but left basically unmentioned the effect of the ridiculous Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, the staggering costs of the Iraqi War, and the rising expenditures under the Bush regime on corporate welfare for his political donors. In other words, Mr. Greenspan basically got up in front of Congress and acted as a shill for George Bush, in a way that should embarrass the supposedly independent Federal Reserve Board.

But one aspect of Mr. Greenspan's testimony today was largely ignored or glossed over by the headline writers -- Mr. Greenspan made his remarks on his own behalf rather than as Fed. Chairman. This is a fairly unusual occurrence; Mr. Greenspan seems to testify expressly on his own his own behalf only when the Bush Administration wants him to push a policy initiative that's in trouble, to shift blame from Bush for a bad economy, or to predict good economic times are just around the corner.

Why did Mr. Greenspan testify only on his own behalf? Did the Federal Reserve Board refuse to be associated with what basically amounted to an attempt by a rabidly partisan Chairman to wade into a political controversy in an economically irresponsible way? And regardless, why does Mr. Greenspan, private citizen, get a Congressional microphone? It would be nice to hear some answers to these questions.

[Update: The diary's been updated to reflect that fact that Greenspan has testified on his own behalf before, but not very regularly. The comments also now have links to that testimony, which seem to show a pattern of when the Chairman testifies on his own behalf.]

[Update 2: There does seem to be at least one big difference between Greenspan's personal views and those of Board. Greenspan favors privitizing Social Security.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Greenspan testified on behalf of the fed and did not endorse private accounts, saying only:

"Beyond the near term, benefits promised to a burgeoning retirement-age population under mandatory entitlement programs, most notably Social Security and Medicare, threaten to strain the resources of the working-age population in the years ahead. Real progress on these issues will unavoidably entail many difficult choices. But the demographics are inexorable, and call for action before the leading edge of baby boomer retirement becomes evident in 2008."

Today, Mr. Greenspan, speaking on his own behalf, said:

"In my view, a retirement system with a significant personal accounts component would provide a more credible means of ensuring that the program actually adds to overall saving and, in turn, boosts the nation's capital stock. The reason is that money allocated to the personal accounts would no longer be available to fund other government activities and--barring an offsetting reduction in private saving outside the new accounts--would, in effect, be reserved for future consumption needs."]

The above was from a Daily Kos diary.

I think its a little wankery to say one thing as Fed chairman, and then say something completely different as a private citizen. And Greenspan supports (as a private citizen) privatization, which would eviscerate the Social Security Trust Fund plan that HE set up in 1983.

None of this means that Greenspan is a total hack; I just don't know. But his seeming hypocrisy, twice over, is a little weird. It comes down to this: either he makes statements he believes to be patently untrue in his role as Fed chairman and lied when he said he liked his SS Trust Fund plan in 1983, or he's a Bush hack.

Though, he's not the biggest hack in Washington. Not by a long shot.

dksuddeth · 03-03-2005, 09:30 PM

anyone have any links or documentation about comments from reid while greenspan worked under clinton?

KMA-628 · 03-03-2005, 09:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

anyone have any links or documentation about comments from reid while greenspan worked under clinton?

He has been pretty consistent with his dislike of Greenspan.

In 1996 and again in 2000, Reid joined a handful of Democratic senators in voting against President Clinton's nomination of Greenspan to new terms as Fed chairman.

guy44 · 03-03-2005, 11:43 PM

Krugman on Greenspan:

Quote:

Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, asserting that the federal government was in imminent danger of paying off too much debt.

On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned Congress of the opposite fiscal danger: he asserted that there would be large budget deficits for the foreseeable future, leading to an unsustainable rise in federal debt. But he counseled against reversing the tax cuts, calling instead for cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Does anyone still take Mr. Greenspan's pose as a nonpartisan font of wisdom seriously?

When Mr. Greenspan made his contorted argument for tax cuts back in 2001, his reputation made it hard for many observers to admit the obvious: he was mainly looking for some way to do the Bush administration a political favor. But there's no reason to be taken in by his equally weak, contorted argument against reversing those cuts today.

To put Mr. Greenspan's game of fiscal three-card monte in perspective, remember that the push for Social Security privatization is only part of the right's strategy for dismantling the New Deal and the Great Society. The other big piece of that strategy is the use of tax cuts to "starve the beast."

Until the 1970's conservatives tended to be open about their disdain for Social Security and Medicare. But honesty was bad politics, because voters value those programs.

So conservative intellectuals proposed a bait-and-switch strategy: First, advocate tax cuts, using whatever tactics you think may work - supply-side economics, inflated budget projections, whatever. Then use the resulting deficits to argue for slashing government spending.

And that's the story of the last four years. In 2001, President Bush and Mr. Greenspan justified tax cuts with sunny predictions that the budget would remain comfortably in surplus. But Mr. Bush's advisers knew that the tax cuts would probably cause budget problems, and welcomed the prospect.

In fact, Mr. Bush celebrated the budget's initial slide into deficit. In the summer of 2001 he called plunging federal revenue "incredibly positive news" because it would "put a straitjacket" on federal spending.

To keep that straitjacket on, however, those who sold tax cuts with the assurance that they were easily affordable must convince the public that the cuts can't be reversed now that those assurances have proved false. And Mr. Greenspan has once again tried to come to the president's aid, insisting this week that we should deal with deficits "primarily, if not wholly," by slashing Social Security and Medicare because tax increases would "pose significant risks to economic growth."

Really? America prospered for half a century under a level of federal taxes higher than the one we face today. According to the administration's own estimates, Mr. Bush's second term will see the lowest tax take as a percentage of G.D.P. since the Truman administration. And don't forget that President Clinton's 1993 tax increase ushered in an economic boom. Why, exactly, are tax increases out of the question?

O.K., enough about Mr. Greenspan. The real news is the growing evidence that the political theory behind the Bush tax cuts was as wrong as the economic theory.

According to starve-the-beast doctrine, right-wing politicians can use the big deficits generated by tax cuts as an excuse to slash social insurance programs. Mr. Bush's advisers thought that it would prove especially easy to sell benefit cuts in the context of Social Security privatization because the president could pretend that a plan that sharply cut benefits would actually be good for workers.

But the theory isn't working. As soon as voters heard that privatization would involve benefit cuts, support for Social Security "reform" plunged. Another sign of the theory's falsity: across the nation, Republican governors, finding that voters really want adequate public services, are talking about tax increases.

The best bet now is that Mr. Bush will manage to make the poor suffer, but fail to make a dent in the great middle-class entitlement programs.

And the consequence of the failure of the starve-the-beast theory is a looming fiscal crisis - Mr. Greenspan isn't wrong about that. The middle class won't give up programs that are essential to its financial security; the right won't give up tax cuts that it sold on false pretenses. The only question now is when foreign investors, who have financed our deficits so far, will decide to pull the plug.

Link

KMA-628 · 03-05-2005, 02:49 PM

NEW YORK — Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (search) on Thursday gave his support to an overhaul of the U.S. tax code and said some form of a consumption tax — such as a national sales tax — could help the economy, but he cautioned that the government would face significant problems making such a transition.

Well, at least I am behind him on this one.

Do you think Greenspan backing a consumption tax is a good or bad thing?

Do you think it will have an effect?

martinguerre · 03-05-2005, 02:57 PM

sales taxes are regressive. to raise the same amount of money, they will with out a doutbt, raise the percent of income that the working poor and the middle class will pay. is that what you want?

KMA-628 · 03-05-2005, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by martinguerre

sales taxes are regressive.

First, this statement is not factual, but heavily disputed by both sides.

Second, how could it be regressive if the first $18k is non-taxable? Regressive means it gets bigger as the income goes down. Last I checked, zero is smaller than one.

Third, we have discussed this in a different thread. Not really on point here. If you want to discuss it further, I would have no problem rehashing the previous discussion.

NCB · 03-05-2005, 03:10 PM

Is he a hack?? Probably not. Does the media give him too much weight on economic issues? Well, that really depends on what issues the media deems important (ie...does it make Bush look bad).

That said, I believe AG loves the attention he gets from the media, thus making him an attention whore

host · 03-06-2005, 12:15 AM

Oh....yeah....Greenspan "is a hack", and he merits watching....closely:

Quote:

Whatever Greenspan decides, two things are certain: He will carry his Fed
colleagues with him, and the financial markets will respond.

He is a peculiar wizard, at once secretive and highly social. By night, he
shows up at one Washington social whoop-de-do after
another—everything from Jack Kent Cooke's box at RFK Stadium to the
Gridiron Club dinner. And on April 6, this quiet, private man is marrying
NBC-TV's high-profile reporter Andrea Mitchell, 50, who has been his
companion for more than 12 years. <a href="http://www.udel.edu/Economics/massey/gsprofile.html">http://www.udel.edu/Economics/massey/gsprofile.html</a>

For those who have me pegged as a rabid, liberal partisan scoundrel, and worse, I'll disclose that one of my long time "heroes" is 14th Texas Congressional District's Congressman Ron Paul MD, a man who never compromises his principles. Read the following two articles, and follow
the link to the third article regularly, for the entertainment and awareness
value combined, and you will have no questionn as to whether Greenspan "is a hack" ,and you will become concerned, to the point of being as afraid as I have become, for the future of our currency, and for our country..............

Quote:

<a href="http://www.smartmoney.com/aheadofthecurve/index.cfm?story=20020301">http://www.smartmoney.com/aheadofthecurve/index.cfm?story=20020301</a>
Ahead of the Curve
The Greenspan Gadfly
By Donald Luskin Published: March 1, 2002

THERE IT WAS, on live TV, in the Q&A session following Alan Greenspan's testimony before the House Financial Services Committee this week. Taking his turn with all the other committee members posing their loaded questions to score points with the voters back home about unemployment benefits, trade tariffs, tax cuts or whatever their pet issues might be, Rep. Ron Paul, a former doctor from the 14th district in Texas who brags on his Web site of having delivered over 4,000 babies, asked Chairman Greenspan point-blank if he thinks the Federal Reserve operates just like Enron (ENRNQ).

It was like a scene from "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." Visualize Jimmy Stewart as Jefferson Smith here — a little nervous, perhaps a touch mad — but deep-down aw shucks sincere. Ron Paul, a Republican, looked the Master of the Universe in the eyes and said, "...we have nearly a $6 trillion debt.... Now the Federal Reserve comes in and they buy that debt in order to maintain the interest rate that they think is the right interest rate, and they take that and they use it as an asset. You put it in the bank, you call this debt that we have created an asset, and you use it as collateral for our Federal Reserve notes. So that's a pretty good scheme. And I think in moral terms, as well as in economic terms, it's very similar to how Enron operates."

A pause. The camera cut to Greenspan, scowling, almost a smirk, with his eyes rolled up looking at the ceiling, as though he were just waiting to see how this utterly bizarre monologue is going to resolve into a question he will actually have to answer, hoping maybe Paul's time will run out.

Paul went on for a while longer, talking about the perils of inflated paper money — fiat currency not backed by gold — issued by governments throughout history. And then the big finish: "...So I would ask you, can you see any corollary whatsoever on what you're asked to do in running our monetary system to that which Enron was involved in?"

If you were watching on CNBC you didn't get to see Greenspan's answer, because the network cut away then. But Greenspan did answer, and if you read the transcripts you'll find that he gave a respectful answer — perhaps even a thoughtful answer — to what might seem like a deliberately provocative question — perhaps even an off-the-wall question.

Greenspan admitted that "...in years past, there's been considerable evidence that fiat currencies have been mismanaged in general and that inflation has been too often the result.... There is some evidence that we are learning how to manage a fiat currency.... The evidence of recent decades is that it has been succeeding. Whether that continues is a forecast which I can't really project on."

And about that comparison to Enron? "And I don't perceive that anything we're doing as a central bank involves anything related to that. I hope that where we need to be transparent and indicate what we are doing, we do so, except in those areas where it...inhibits the ability to actually function as a central bank. But as I say in summary, I hope your analogy is inappropriate."

Congressman Paul told me Thursday that Greenspan is used to these out-of-the-box questions from him that cast doubt on the very legitimacy of the Federal Reserve. "My questions are always on the same subject. If I don't bring up the issue of hard money vs. fiat money, Greenspan himself does."

But at the same time, Paul says that he wasn't satisfied with Greenspan's answer. "I got what I expected: a nonanswer. He never gets into anything of substance, but, he does have a lingering doubt — he's not sure the system will work. He's a gold-standard person, but he's talked himself into believing he's the best manager in the world, and I just disagree with that."

Paul is a die-hard libertarian, who won't vote for any bill before the House — no matter how worthy it may seem — if he can't find a specific provision in the U.S. Constitution that empowers Congress to do what the bill proposes. And in that spirit, he thinks that the Federal Reserve has no right to exist in the first place. Paul told me, "All we'd have to do is support the Constitution and we'd abolish the Fed. The Federal Reserve Act is unconstitutional — nowhere in the Constitution does it say that Congress can create a central bank."

Quote:

<a href="http://www.house.gov/paul/legis.shtml">http://www.house.gov/paul/legis.shtml</a>
Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - A weekly Column

The Maestro Changes his Tune

February 21, 2005

Nearly 40 years ago, Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan wrote persuasively in favor of a gold monetary standard in an essay entitled Gold and Economic Freedom. In that essay he neatly summarized the fundamental problem with fiat currency in a few short sentences: “The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit… In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value… Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the ‘hidden’ confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”

Today, however, Mr. Greenspan has become one of those central planners he once denounced, and his views on fiat currency have changed accordingly. As the ultimate insider, he cannot or will not challenge the status quo, no matter what the consequences to the American economy. To renounce the fiat system now would mean renouncing the Fed itself, and his entire public career with it. The only question is whether history will properly reflect the destructive nature of Mr. Greenspan’s tenure.

I had an opportunity to ask him about his change of heart when he appeared before the House Financial Services committee last week. Although Mr. Greenspan is a master of evasion, he was surprisingly forthright in his responses to me. In short, he claimed he was wrong about his predictions of calamity for the fiat U.S. dollar, that the Federal Reserve does a good job of essentially mimicking a gold standard, and that inflation is well under control. He even made the preposterous assertion that the Fed does not facilitate government expansion and deficit spending. In other words, he utterly repudiated the arguments he made 40 years ago. Yet this begs the question: If he was so wrong in the past, why should we listen to him now?

First, the Federal Reserve does not mimic a gold standard by any measure. The clearest example of this lies in our current account deficit, which our fiat currency encourages. Under a gold standard we would not have exchange rate distortions between the Chinese renminbi and the U.S. dollar, for example. True currency stability is impossible when fiat dollars can be produced at will and foreign lenders bankroll our deficits.

Second, inflation is a much greater problem than the federal government admits. Health care, housing, and energy are three areas where costs have risen dramatically. The producer price index is rising at the fastest rate in seven years. Bond prices are rising. To suggest that rapid expansion of the money supply and artificially low interest rates do not ultimately cause price inflation is absurd.

Third, Fed policies do indeed have adverse political ramifications. Fiat currency and big government go hand-in-hand. Without a gold standard, Congress is free to spend recklessly and fall back on monetary expansion to pay the bills. Politically, it’s easier to print new dollars than raise taxes or borrow overseas. The Fed in essence creates paper reserves that enable Congress to undertake spending measures that far exceed tax revenues. The ill effects of this process are not felt by the politicians, who can always find popular support for new spending. Average Americans suffer, however, when their dollars are “confiscated through inflation,” as Mr. Greenspan termed it.

It’s not enough to question the wisdom of Mr. Greenspan. Americans should question why we have a central bank at all, and whose interests it serves. The laws of supply and demand work better than any central banker to determine both the correct supply of money in the economy and the interest rate at which capital is available- without the political favoritism and secrecy that characterize central banks. Americans should not tolerate the manipulation of our economy and the inflation of our currency by an unaccountable institution.

Quote:

<a href="http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/AlanGreenspanisDestroyingYourMoney.html">http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/AlanGreenspanisDestroyingYourMoney.html</a>
-Over at Kitco we see that gold lease rates have risen dramatically, and have apparently bottomed. Hmmmm. But before you declare the onset of the gold bull, Paul van Eeden says, "This rise in the gold price, as has been the case for the past three years, is mostly a dollar phenomenon. It’s a bear market in the dollar, not a bull market in gold." To which I add, "Not yet, anyway. But with all the countries on the face of the freaking planet expanding their money supplies with heart-stopping insanity, it soon WILL be a global bull market, as price inflation will follow their monetary inflations, too!"

Speaking of inflation, I know that you are tired of me talking about it. Now let's take a look at it up close and personal. The latest report shows that the January monthly prices for imported consumer goods (other than automobiles) increased 0.4 percent, the most since January of last year.

The cost of ALL imported goods last month was 6 percent greater than in January 2004. Excluding petroleum, they were up 3 percent from the same month last year. The price of oil jumped 27% t in the last twelve months! And today (Tuesday, 2/22) the price of a barrel of crude jumped by over two bucks, to over $50 a barrel!

And while we are at it, let's take a look at producer prices. As Bloomberg puts it, "The 0.8 percent increase in the Labor Department's producer price index, excluding food and energy, was the most in more than six years."

Eerily similar, the Yahoo! News report said, "The producer price index, which measures prices received by farms, factories and refineries, moved up 0.3 percent in the month, the department said. But the core index, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, shot up 0.8 percent, the biggest gain since December 1998."

For those of you who cannot bear the thought of being labeled a gold bug or having any similarity to The Mogambo for that matter, but still want to participate in the price inflation, a reader code-named Shepardess notes, "The MOST prized possession in post WWI Germany [and post WWII] was cooking oil, cigarettes and booze."

-The Christian Science Monitor writes that, "Foreigners worry about the stability of the dollar because Americans are overspending. There's the growing budget deficit, of course. But of equal importance for currency traders is the $617.7 billion imbalance between what the US buys and what it sells abroad. Americans are spending about 5.7 percent more than the nation itself produces. At the moment, the US must borrow $55 billion a month, $1.8 billion a day, to finance its massive deficit in international payments. Over time, the decline in the dollar should readjust that balance, since US exports will become more competitive and imports more expensive." Which is exactly what we are seeing!

-Thomson Financial, an information firm in New York, says, "A boom in foreign purchases of US firms, now seen as a bargain, may have started. Last year, 1,126 US businesses were sold to foreign buyers, up from 1,032 in 2003 and 980 in 2002." This is how Thomas Jefferson came to say something about how fiat money will ruin us and that we will, and I am quoting from memory: "Wake up homeless on the continent their forefathers gave them." They will have strong money and we will have weak money, and thus they can buy us, lock, stock and barrel.

-One of the big arguments for privatization of Social Security is that Chile has had personal retirement accounts for quite awhile, and, "Established in 1981, Chile’s personal savings account system has yielded an average of 10 percent return on investments. The primary investment vehicles are stocks and corporate and government bonds." This is statistical quackery, and do not listen to anybody who parrots this nonsense.

-A reader named Darrin sent an interesting little bit of research that he has done. He writes, "Here's a little something that I noticed a few months ago. Pennies dated 1981 and earlier are 3.11 grams of 95% copper, or about 2.95 grams of copper. Expressed in units that the rest of us understand, there is 1 pound of copper in 153.5 pennies.

"The latest copper price from kitcometals.com is $1.51 per pound. It is nearly worthwhile to take the change jar and the kid's piggy bank to a scrap metal dealer.

"The people around me don't quite grasp currency debasement, inflation, world markets, and all of that economic stuff, but when I show them that even pennies aren't what they used to be, it looks like they begin to get the message."

-A lot of people were watching Alan Greenspan testify at the House Finance Committee, and like a lot of us, most thought it was a laugh-riot. Peter Schiff of EuroPacific Capital is one of them, and in an essay, "Greenspan Tells More Whoppers," he writes, "Like a kid in a candy shop I don't know where to start in refuting these claims. Perhaps the most memorable moment of the entire spectacle was Congressman Ron Paul quoting Greenspan to Greenspan, requiring the chairman to admit that his younger self was wrong. Unfortunately, Greenspan the younger was not wrong, just early. It seems only fitting that in a testimony fraught with contradictions, Greenspan's greatest critic was in fact himself.".................

..............................................In fact, he said as much! He said: “We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.” But he can! He is guaranteeing less purchasing power by his every word and deed since 1998!

Ron Paul asked him whether a gold standard would prevent the government from amassing such huge debts. He replied, " I think we have been remarkably successful, in my judgment … mimicking much of what the gold standard does… I think in that context so far we have maintained a stable monetary system.” Hahahaha! What an idiot! His monetary system has ZERO is common with a gold standard! What does he think we are? A bunch of chumps that we don’t know what a gold standard is? Hahahaha! ............................

Yakk · 03-06-2005, 10:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kma-628

If he says the deficit is our biggest concern, the Dems love him and the Republicans blow him off.

Personally, I find this statement overwealmingly funny, in the historical context.

Killconey · 03-07-2005, 02:41 AM

Greenspan in kind of like your local weatherman. If he predicts rain and it rains, you are happy because you are wearing your raincoat. If he says it will be sunny and its sunny, you are happy because you are playing outside. If he says it will be partly cloudy with a thirty percent chance of rain and it rains, you are furious with him because obviously he either caused the rain or failed to warn you about it.

The man is just trying to read the signs around him. Greenspan is no more a hack than any other economist.

host · 03-07-2005, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killconey

Greenspan in kind of like your local weatherman. If he predicts rain and it rains, you are happy because you are wearing your raincoat. If he says it will be sunny and its sunny, you are happy because you are playing outside. If he says it will be partly cloudy with a thirty percent chance of rain and it rains, you are furious with him because obviously he either caused the rain or failed to warn you about it.

The man is just trying to read the signs around him. Greenspan is no more a hack than any other economist.

I disagree. Greenspan the economist is on record making the very accurate
case for gold being a reliable and risk free medium of exchange, and that the
history of fiat currencies is a dismal record of inevitable failure.

When pressed by Ron Paul, as I documented above, Greenspan does not retract his advocacy for a gold standard, yet he "takes credit" and therefore also advocates, as Fed chairman, the largest and riskiest policy of expansion of a fiat currency based monetary system ever undertaken, even as he offers
no prediction for the effect on valuation that the policy he has presided over
will result in.

Quote:

In fact, he said as much! He said: “We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.” But he can! He is guaranteeing less purchasing power by his every word and deed since 1998!

03-03-2005, 07:22 PM	#3 (permalink)
martinguerre whosoever Location: New England	i used to respect him a great deal...he insisted on political independance, and that lowering the deficit, and hopefully later the debt, was the path to long term fiscal stablity for the nation. he seemed to lose a lot of that with W... Greenspan famously hiked rates against the wishes of Bush Sr, which helped to elect Clinton in 92... but this time around, he seems to parrot the latest lines. i dunno if his replacement canidates will be any better. volker doesn't seem to want the job back...and he's the only one who really comes to mind. __________________ For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life. -John 3:16

03-03-2005, 09:30 PM	#5 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	anyone have any links or documentation about comments from reid while greenspan worked under clinton? __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

03-05-2005, 02:49 PM	#8 (permalink)
KMA-628 ....is off his meds...you were warned. Location: The Wild Wild West	NEW YORK — Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (search) on Thursday gave his support to an overhaul of the U.S. tax code and said some form of a consumption tax — such as a national sales tax — could help the economy, but he cautioned that the government would face significant problems making such a transition. Well, at least I am behind him on this one. Do you think Greenspan backing a consumption tax is a good or bad thing? Do you think it will have an effect? __________________ Before you criticize someone, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. That way, if they get angry at you.......you're a mile away.......and they're barefoot.

03-05-2005, 02:57 PM	#9 (permalink)
martinguerre whosoever Location: New England	sales taxes are regressive. to raise the same amount of money, they will with out a doutbt, raise the percent of income that the working poor and the middle class will pay. is that what you want? __________________ For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life. -John 3:16

03-07-2005, 02:41 AM	#14 (permalink)
Killconey Crazy Location: Various places in the Midwest, all depending on when I'm posting.	Greenspan in kind of like your local weatherman. If he predicts rain and it rains, you are happy because you are wearing your raincoat. If he says it will be sunny and its sunny, you are happy because you are playing outside. If he says it will be partly cloudy with a thirty percent chance of rain and it rains, you are furious with him because obviously he either caused the rain or failed to warn you about it. The man is just trying to read the signs around him. Greenspan is no more a hack than any other economist. __________________ Look out for numbers two and up and they'll look out for you.

03-03-2005, 07:20 PM	#2 (permalink)
jorgelito All important elusive independent swing voter... Location: People's Republic of KKKalifornia	scratches head He's sort of an institution, kind of Merlin-like, very mysterious. Usually, I don't really understand what he says until someone interprets it. Generally, I am under the impression that he's doing a good job, done a good job, but I am not an economist. As for personal opinion, I would say depends on whom you ask. If you did well while he was around, you probably like him. If you've been laid of dozens of times or whatever can be attributed to him, you probably don't think he did a good job. Kind of like your Rep vs Dems comparison. It's hard to quantify what he did for me: His raising of interest rates increased my student loans. Since I haven't bought a house yet, I did not benefit from when he lowered interest rates. I don't freak out too much cause I figure it all rolls around eventually.