Alan Greenspan

  • 18 Mar 2010 at 5:15 PM

Alan Greenspan Admits Some Balls Were Dropped During His Tenure At The Fed

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Shut it, Benji.Alan Greenspan has written a book report that he will present at the Brookings Institution tomorrow. Some are calling it his “most detailed examination of the causes of the financial crisis.” Does he lay out his patented 3-Step Guide For Being Fed Chair (1. Talk like you know your shit, even when you don’t. 2. Cut rates like a Thai hooker with the clap 3. When in doubt, print it out), which may have helped get us into the financial shit-storm du-jour? Not explicitly, no. (Does Coke just up and give out its secret recipe for free? That’s what I thought.) Seven Piña coladas into happy hour in the Maldives, however, he did decide to say this:

We never had a sufficiently strong conviction about the risks that could lie ahead. As I noted earlier, we had been lulled into a state of complacency by the only modestly negative economic aftermaths of the stock market crash of 1987 and the dot-com boom. Given history, we believed that any declines in home prices would be gradual. Destabilizing debt problems were not perceived to arise under those conditions.

Threw this in there too:

For years the Federal Reserve had been concerned about the ever larger size of our financial institutions. Federal Reserve research had been unable to find economies of scale in banking beyond a modest-sized institution. A decade ago, citing such evidence, I noted that “megabanks being formed by growth and consolidation are increasingly complex entities that create the potential for unusually large systemic risks in the national and international economy should they fail.” Regrettably, we did little to address the problem.

Also:

The believers of Fed “easy money” policy as the root of the housing bubble correctly note that a low fed fund rate (at only 1% between mid-2003 and mid-2004) lowered interest rates for adjustable rate mortgages (ARM). That in turn, they claim, increased demand for homes financed by ARMs and hence were an important contributor to the emergence of the bubble.

Having said all that? Lest any of you pipsqueaks (Benji) even think about daring to pin one iota of blame for all this shit on him? THINK AGAIN. There was nothing that could’ve been do done. Continue reading »

  • 23 Feb 2010 at 3:09 PM

Alan Greenspan’s Latest Achievement

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alan-greenspan.jpgCongratulations Alan Greenspan! The former fed chair, who people are hoping will die soon, has won the Dynamite Prize in Economics, which is basically what the Razzie Awards are to the Oscars. Greenspan was awarded the honor as the economist most responsible for blowing up the global economy.

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  • 19 Feb 2010 at 12:34 PM

When Will Alan Greenspan Finally Die?

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Picture 183.pngI’m not asking for me, I’m asking for Matthew Schirmer, one of the many people who bought a portrait of McG back when he was a hot-ticket item anyone who’s anyone would proudly display around the house. Now? That people have realized he kinda helped us get into the financial shit-storm du jour with his patented 3-Step Guide For Being Fed Chair (1. Talk like you know your shit, even when you don’t. 2. Cut rates like a Thai hooker with the clap 3. When in doubt, print it out)? No one wants anything to do with him and if you’re unlucky enough to have his picture stinking up your home, like Schirmer, you just want the guy to bite the big one already.

Mr. Schirmer says he had high hopes for the painting when he bought it in 2006 with his brother, Nathan. The money they spent went to a worthy cause, autism research. But Mr. Schirmer says he was hoping to raise even more money for a favorite charity, Autism Speaks.
“We thought, let us ride this wave,” he recalls. Mr. Schirmer paid to have 100 high-quality prints made of the painting. He flew Ms. Crowe to Florida to sign them. Her painting was placed on an easel in the lobby of a Tampa-area bank Mr. Schirmer helped found. Mr. Schirmer anticipated holding charity fund-raisers with the Greenspan painting as a draw.
Picture 185.png
“There was no interest,” he says. To this day, he hasn’t sold any prints, he says, “not a single one.” The original painting could still recover some value, he says. “I hate to tell you, but we are kind of waiting for him to pass on.

It’s not that Schirmer et al wish Big Al any harm, per se, it’s just that he’s not the sort of thing you want lying around the house, where guests or innocent children might see him.

Brian McAnaney, a lawyer in Stamford, Conn., bought an early Greenspan painting by Ms. Crowe at a charity auction way back for $300. A friend of the artist’s family, he hung the painting in his office, where it remained until he retired. Now he has it hidden away in a closet in his summer house.
“It is a little hard to find a place for Mr. Greenspan in my homes,” Mr. McAnaney says. “He is still there, but in a closet, because it is difficult to find a place for him in a family setting.”

Until our sweet prince finally does take his final bow, though, he’s actually not entirely useless.

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