“I’m waiting for someone to come back and tell me my data was wrong,” Big Al said in an interview with the Journal today. “Allow the facts to fall where they are. I have answered my critics. I have put the data out there. Let them prove me wrong.” He meant about the economy though feel free to freestyle on other topics. Come one, come all. [WSJ]

Comments (42)

  1. Posted by KKK | January 7, 2011 at 6:44 PM

    Has this man got no shame?

  2. Posted by KKK | January 7, 2011 at 6:44 PM

    Has this man got no shame?

  3. Posted by KKK | January 7, 2011 at 6:44 PM

    Has this man got no shame?

  4. Posted by Guest | January 7, 2011 at 6:44 PM

    what are you getting at?

  5. Posted by Guest | January 7, 2011 at 6:44 PM

    what are you getting at?

  6. Posted by Guest | January 7, 2011 at 6:44 PM

    what are you getting at?

  7. Posted by Somnolento | January 7, 2011 at 6:45 PM

    Can he please hurry up and die already? Why do people keep giving him airtime?

  8. Posted by Somnolento | January 7, 2011 at 6:45 PM

    Can he please hurry up and die already? Why do people keep giving him airtime?

  9. Posted by Somnolento | January 7, 2011 at 6:45 PM

    Can he please hurry up and die already? Why do people keep giving him airtime?

  10. Posted by Somnolento | January 7, 2011 at 6:45 PM

    Can he please hurry up and die already? Why do people keep giving him airtime?

  11. Posted by Somnolento | January 7, 2011 at 6:45 PM

    Can he please hurry up and die already? Why do people keep giving him airtime?

  12. Posted by Guest | January 7, 2011 at 6:47 PM

    prick.

    -Benji

  13. Posted by JR | January 7, 2011 at 6:52 PM

    Your data was fine, Al. It’s the retarded conclusions you drew from the data and the idiotic policies that ensued that are causing a wee bit of discomfort. Now shut up and put your head back in your shell.

  14. Posted by BankerChick | January 7, 2011 at 7:02 PM

    have I been on a dry spell too long or is he looking GOOD?

  15. Posted by Guest | January 7, 2011 at 7:05 PM

    Here’s a nice run-down of Greenspan waxing poetic on the virtues of adjustable rate mortgages in 2004. How’d that turn out?
    http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/p73977.asp

    The article also mentions him extolling the virtues of technology stocks in 2000, right before the crash.

    His urging the exemption of Charles Keatings S&L a couple years for its collapse (as well as 15 others that eventually collapsed).

    The Maestro!

    – Dave Chappelle

  16. Posted by Guest | January 7, 2011 at 7:09 PM

    Well at least he didn’t remove the bathroom fixtures from the Federal Reserve Building when he left.

  17. Posted by Thatguy | January 7, 2011 at 7:12 PM

    Dear Alan-

    I just put your “data” in our system and my PC is now smoking and shooting sparks across the room. Can you recheck your sources and get back to me?

    Thanks.
    Quant at every bucket shop on Wall Street

  18. Posted by Thatguy | January 7, 2011 at 7:12 PM

    Dear Alan-

    I just put your “data” in our system and my PC is now smoking and shooting sparks across the room. Can you recheck your sources and get back to me?

    Thanks.
    Quant at every bucket shop on Wall Street

  19. Posted by Thatguy | January 7, 2011 at 7:12 PM

    Dear Alan-

    I just put your “data” in our system and my PC is now smoking and shooting sparks across the room. Can you recheck your sources and get back to me?

    Thanks.
    Quant at every bucket shop on Wall Street

  20. Posted by Thatguy | January 7, 2011 at 7:12 PM

    Dear Alan-

    I just put your “data” in our system and my PC is now smoking and shooting sparks across the room. Can you recheck your sources and get back to me?

    Thanks.
    Quant at every bucket shop on Wall Street

  21. Posted by Andrea Mitchell | January 7, 2011 at 7:13 PM

    Yours.

  22. Posted by Andrea Mitchell | January 7, 2011 at 7:13 PM

    Yours.

  23. Posted by Andrea Mitchell | January 7, 2011 at 7:13 PM

    Yours.

  24. Posted by Andrea Mitchell | January 7, 2011 at 7:13 PM

    Yours.

  25. Posted by Andrea Mitchell | January 7, 2011 at 7:13 PM

    Yours.

  26. Posted by Andrea Mitchell | January 7, 2011 at 7:13 PM

    Yours.

  27. Posted by Decision Decider | January 7, 2011 at 7:15 PM

    If by “good” you mean less bad, then yes.

  28. Posted by Decision Decider | January 7, 2011 at 7:15 PM

    If by “good” you mean less bad, then yes.

  29. Posted by Decision Decider | January 7, 2011 at 7:15 PM

    If by “good” you mean less bad, then yes.

  30. Posted by Decision Decider | January 7, 2011 at 7:15 PM

    If by “good” you mean less bad, then yes.

  31. Posted by Decision Decider | January 7, 2011 at 7:15 PM

    If by “good” you mean less bad, then yes.

  32. Posted by Decision Decider | January 7, 2011 at 7:15 PM

    If by “good” you mean less bad, then yes.

  33. Posted by Ron Santo | January 7, 2011 at 7:27 PM

    Al:

    I know it hurts and it’s going to keep on hurting, but it’s the self-judgement that’s the killer and is sparking your incessant need to justify and rationalize. But really now, buck up — and take it like a man. Just admit, it was Ayn’s charming rual russian poetic ways, her cheerful disposition, her charming smile and her willingness to listen with an understanding heart that blinded you — no — it wasn’t greed, grandiosity or even the need to be ‘one of the boys.’ You were wrong, sure, but you were wrong because you cared. You cared too much.

  34. Posted by Ron Santo | January 7, 2011 at 7:27 PM

    Al:

    I know it hurts and it’s going to keep on hurting, but it’s the self-judgement that’s the killer and is sparking your incessant need to justify and rationalize. But really now, buck up — and take it like a man. Just admit, it was Ayn’s charming rual russian poetic ways, her cheerful disposition, her charming smile and her willingness to listen with an understanding heart that blinded you — no — it wasn’t greed, grandiosity or even the need to be ‘one of the boys.’ You were wrong, sure, but you were wrong because you cared. You cared too much.

  35. Posted by El Labrador | January 7, 2011 at 7:30 PM

    I think he was deranged on Viagra after marrying Andrea Mitchell

  36. Posted by El Labrador | January 7, 2011 at 7:30 PM

    I think he was deranged on Viagra after marrying Andrea Mitchell

  37. Posted by El Labrador | January 7, 2011 at 7:30 PM

    I think he was deranged on Viagra after marrying Andrea Mitchell

  38. Posted by Anonymous | January 7, 2011 at 8:38 PM

    Are we allowed to use observed results as a criterion for judgment?

    If not, then Al’s a genius.

    Nobody I know has questioned his data, really – it was his judgment, which was repeatedly wrong, and near-catastrophically so.

  39. Posted by Christofurio | January 8, 2011 at 12:32 AM

    Here’s some data, Al. Admittedly, I have the benefit of hindsight, but you asked for it.

    Here are some examples: on January 3-4, 2001, the Fed under your leadership cut both the federal funds rate and the discount rate. One important point about this, it did NOT happen at a regularly scheduled meeting of the Fed Open Market Committee (FOMC). You thought this important enough to arrange it between regular meetings.

    Why? Because the dot-com boom, fueled in part by the rescue of LTCM’s counterparties you arranged and the confidence in a Greenspan put that created, had burst in early 2000, creating a (mild) recession, and like an alcoholic in the pangs of a hangover you reached for the dog with which you had bit us.

    On the last day of that month, the FOMC did meet, and cut both rates again.

    Your Fed lowered both the discount and the fed funds rate again in March 2001, and then again in April, and then again in May…. are you getting the picture? Is any of this coming back to you? This is data.

    When the year began, the federal funds rate was 6.5%. In early September of that year, BEFORE the US was attacked, that rate was down to 3.5%. You had nearly cut it in half. In reaction to the attacks, you cut some more. At the end of the year, the funds rate was 1.25%.

    Here’s the bottom line, genius. You produced an environment of easy credit, and that credit was going to cause a bubble in some assets, real estate or commodities or CDOs or tulip bulbs or something, and concomitantly it was going to find its way to people who didn’t know what they were doing with it. That is what easy credit does. This would have happened had there been no GSEs. Though of course there were, and the shape the crisis took had something to do with the pro-housing ideology of many on Capitol Hill, which you did your own little bit to encourage — but I’ll give you a buy on that one. Your part in the pro-housing ideology was probably fairly small.

    Let’s just keep our eyes on the easy credit thing. That there would be such a bubble, and that it would not last forever — that there would be a crisis … these facts were in the cards regardless.

    You put them in those cards. And you knew better. I’m no Randianb, but you were, and one of the things I do agree with Randians about is this — central banking is the very disease that it pretends to cure. So you knew better. The more is the pity.

    Data enough?

  40. Posted by Howard Roark | January 8, 2011 at 3:45 AM

    Bravo sir.

  41. Posted by Guest | January 10, 2011 at 2:00 PM

    Ugh, all of you are hypocrites. Everyone was more than happy to take the easy credit. Plus, with the dot-com and 9/11 recessions what traditional tools did he have? Sure he may have let it go on way too long, etc. However, hindsight is 20/20 and it’s silly to judge him on what we know now as opposed to what we all knew then. What we should be doing is learning from our mistakes. This wasn’t all his fault…

    -Guy with some broader perspective.

  42. Posted by M Ashton | January 21, 2011 at 2:49 AM

    Well, I published a book several years ago (written in 2004, but prevented from publication at that time by my employer) called “Maestro, My Ass!” so I guess he’s wrong that no one challenged him…

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