Maybe He Didn’t Want To Add To Weekly Claims

Paul Kasriel of The Northern Trust Co. says the surprise isn’t that Greenspan was tapped for an extended stay at helm of Fed but rather that he accepted. Saying the impending interest rate boost runs a very real possibility of bursting the housing bubble in the next two years, Kasriel asks:

“Why wouldn’t Greenspan leave this potential debacle to his successor to deal with? Why not go out on top of the world now? Does Greenspan’s pride goeth before the fall?”

via Dow Jones Newswires

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  1. Fred Boness commented on May 19

    Greenspan is 78. How much longer can he keep working?

  2. Barry Ritholtz commented on May 19

    Here’s my all time favorite review of Atlas Shrugged:

    A lovely addition to any fire., March 29, 2004

    “Five stars, one star. Five stars, one star. Over and over the same pattern. Seems as humans, we’re evenly divided into two camps: those who think everything is fundamentally simple, and those who think things are complex and interrelated. If you’re a member of the former camp – the “right vs. wrong,” “good vs. evil,” “us vs. them” set – you’ll probably enjoy Atlas Shrugged; you’ll think Rand tells it like it is and you’ll like her powerful writing style too. Thank you for reading my review, and enjoy the book.

    But if you’re a member of the latter camp – if you value subtlety, insight, complex characters, a believable plot, and thought-provoking dialogue – then RUN from Ayn Rand. Unless you’re researching how the “us vs. them” crowd thinks, in which case you should stock up on Tylenol first. To read Rand is to have the sensation of someone pounding on your forehead with a hammer. Penguin Putnam ought to attach a medal to the inside back cover as a reward to anyone who made it through the book. I know I wanted one.

    Non-ideologues and those attempting to read Atlas as literature and not as a political doctrine are almost certain to be disappointed by the book. It fails for sheer lack of merit. Its characters, while colorfully imagined, are not provided with distinctive voices. One sounds much like another – strident, tendentious, and monothematic. Sentences run on to become paragraphs, paragraphs run on to become chapters, and some characters’ lines – most notably Galt’s – run on to become full-blown speeches of fifty pages or more. If you’ve ever wondered how a writer could develop diarrhea of the pen and create a book four or five times longer than it needs to be, Atlas is a must-read.

    Any editor could have improved this book. We can almost hear Rand, fresh from her success with The Fountainhead, telling the publisher “you will print it exactly as is. Not one word changed, not one sentence deleted. Otherwise I will take it somewhere else.” At 1,000-plus pages, Atlas is a monument to the writer’s ego.

    And it reads it. There is no hint of Rand’s humanity; she coldly kills off the bulk of the human race so that an ultra-talented, atheistic cabal can inherit the world. That one might not want to live in the resultant society of mass-murderers is never examined, because at the end of the book everyone is either capitalist or dead. I wonder how long it would be before the survivors started killing each other off as well – because hey, if I have what’s yours as well as what’s mine, that’s twice as good. Without a system of ethics or morals to guide us, human society quickly degenerates to the tribal. Trust me, you don’t want to go back to the jungle.

    Poor character development, strident tone, bad dialogue, wildly improbable plot, no examination of complex issues, no presentation of alternative or conflicting viewpoints, no sense of humanity, and an editor paid to vacation in Miami until after the book had come out. I give this book exactly one star.”

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/flex-sign-in/ref=cm_rate_rev_pagepos1/102-4529470-0078540#rated-review

  3. Mike commented on May 19

    Yeah, I could not stand to read Rand, either.

    Here is my favorite piece from a Rand publication (simply because of the sheer irony). It comes from “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” and was written in 1966 by Alan Greenspan. Called “Gold and Economic Freedom,” you will see why I use the term “ironic” in describing it. Is this the same man at the head of the FOMC?

    http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html

  4. George commented on Mar 16

    Maybe make small caps part of the big picture?

    [EDITOR] NASD restirctions make it too difficult . . .
    -br

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