Comments on: Greenspan’s Denial

By: alingelb

alingelb — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:37:25 +0000

Boockvar writes “Foreign holdings of US Treasuries rose 21% in ’04 and 23% in ’05.” But according to Data360 (http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=272) these appear to be the abosolute values; in other words it should read “Foreign holdings of US Treasuries rose TO 21% in ’04 and 23% in ’05.” Perhaps a small typo but it seems to make a big difference in meaning.

Also, Greenspan writes, “Aside from the inappropriate use of short-term rates to explain the value of long-term assets…”, but at the time real estate was being traded on a more short-term basis, if I understand things correctly.

By: DeDude

DeDude — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:23:04 +0000

What Greenspan and the other neoconomist clowns failed to realize is that the only sustainable economic growth, comes from growing the income of the consumer class. That is the reason that semi-socialist economies like the Scandinavians have been so increadibly successful. At times those countries had the unions run the (democratically elected) government. That ensured that most benfits of increased productivity were distributed to the consumer class and, therefore, had the maximum effect on pushing further economic growth. Everybody is a winner as long as nobody gets to gready. Or use the south American model, and have a few gazillionaires and a small economy with a huge mass of poor people. It’s time to choose which fork in the road we want to go down, I say let’s get out the pitchforks.

By: hpov2000

hpov2000 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:40:54 +0000

@rootless_cosmopolitan: (March 11th, 2009 at 3:33 pm)

How about ARMs? Initial low interest tracks the short term rate quite closely. Most of the speculation
in residential real estate was with 1/5 year ARM.

By: which-ways-up

which-ways-up — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:10:59 +0000

Greenspan’s really stretching to save himself here. His argument is basically I didn’t create the crisis I created the environment that created the crisis.

http://which-ways-up.com/2009/03/alan-greenspan-attempts-to-cover-own-ass/

By: Bob A

Bob A — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:21:30 +0000

Let’s not forget the moron GWB touting “an ownership society” in one State of the Union address.

By: Boomer

Boomer — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:56:32 +0000

As my wife says about Greenspan… “Well, at least he has his looks”

By: gloppie

gloppie — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:38:33 +0000

I meant /dev/null of course.
By the way, it is worth repeating to all you Microsofties out there that Linux is free and it rules.
Try it in the Debian flavour, or the Ubuntu flavour, or the Gentoo one, or any other, but TRY IT.
Before dumping that old hardware, download a free CD iso image, burn it, boot it and enjoy.

By: gloppie

gloppie — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:33:09 +0000

WSJ | /de/null

By: Mark E Hoffer

Mark E Hoffer — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:13:33 +0000

MRegan Says:

March 11th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
From the NYT via the Daily Dish blog:

The Looting of America’s Coffers

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/business/economy/11leonhardt.html?_r=3&ref=todayspaper

Perhaps of interest to some of the posters and readers of this blog.

MR,

that art. is not only well wrirrwn, but spot-on..

the idea that any of this–what we’ve recently been entreated to– is de novo, is an idea lifted straight from a Handbook endorsed by Bernays, not *Reality.

this update of Economy Ramp’nCrash v2.0 has been in Beta-testing for many moon..

By: Mannwich

Mannwich — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:48:38 +0000

@Mark S: I totally agree with you that the taxpayer relief act has had a huge impact as well. Why is the government providing a direct subsidy to homeowners and favoring this group over renters or any other? The more I think about it, the more I realize the current tax code simply needs to be scrapped and replaced with something much simpler that is more loophole-proof. Of course, the tax accounting lobby won’t like that at all. If the tax code were simple, their business would be done for.