"I still do not understand exactly how it happened," said Greenspan.

At least he is honest

That is one way of looking at it

saw a pic of him on CNN , does'nt look too good.

An educated Idiot perhaps, but Honest????,,,,,,,Oh Please

He believed that the instinct of financial institutions to preserve their own lives might prevent them from slow suicide. Can't really fault that thinking. But it turned out to be naive.

IMHO he gave other people too much credit for having the raw brain matter capable of preserving itself.

And people in the institutions who knew FULL WELL that investment vehicles based on these horrible loan structures continued to give investors the "good as gold" advice. Raking in money knowing they were investing in crap. "good as gold"? Fools.

You cant fault Greenspan for that.

and even what should be regulated, wasnt regulated. they simply look away and he was third hand of crooks from Walstreet.
Greenspam is also bubble creator with his easy money policies.
Just how many bubless was there under his leadership?

When I call him idiot last year in the summer, I was laughed by GFY economists. Without his significant help, this mess wouldnt be so big. Now I can laugh, but its not funny unfortunately.

You can take your college educations and shove them up your ass. No matter what profession you are in, after five years or so your college education is worthless. I have a degree in Computer Tech and everything I learned is ancient history.

These fucking old school people couldn't see this coming and it was like a fucking freight train coming at them at 120 mph.

He should have been listening to people like Peter Schiff he saw this coming a long time ago. Why we still listen to these people who caused the problem then they say "I still do not understand" is beyond me.

I want a tshirt with the Greenspan´s face saying "shit happens"

in particular, when you have Paulson, who helped a lot to cause this finacial crises (as head of GS) and is now in charge to solve it....so far he is the same clueless guy like Greenspam.

now this is good one:

http://market-ticker.org/archives/62...an-Idiocy.html

Greenspan Idiocy

Listen up folks.

Greenspan said today in his testimony that ALT-A MBS "appetite" (that is, marketability) will likely never return.

This means that any of these "assets" that the TARP (you, the Taxpayer) "buy" will never be resold to anyone. You will eat them, and Hank Paulson's claim that these "assets" will return a "profit" to the taxpayer is false.

Second, if home prices are doubling but incomes are not increasing, what part of that did you willfully ignore Mr. Greenspan?

The job of regulation is to prevent people, who are naturally greedy and will press whatever advantage they can manage to acquire, from doing so in a fashion that develops into systemic risk, and guaranteeing that the risk they pile on inures only to them when their bets turn out badly.

In this regard both Greenspan and Bernanke have been utter failures, and both had the ability to put a cork in this crap by cutting off dealers who violated prudent standards for lending and risk management from Fed facilities.

Neither did so.

Congress held plenty of hearings, but in point of fact what Congress has not done is exercise its prudent and proper role as an overseer of those who are supposed to regulate our financial markets, immediately removing from office those who refuse to discharge their duties properly and replacing them with someone who will, indicting the malfeasors when appropriate.

And before someone says "they didn't know", that's a bald-faced lie.

Both Congress and Alan Greenspan were explicitly warned that this would be the result.

On July 7th I wrote on this matter, and those who have forgotten need to go read that Ticker again, along with the written testimony given to Congress in 1991.

Specifically:

""If Congress again opens up banking to Wall Street speculation, as it opened up S&Ls and banks to real estate speculation, regulators will quickly lose control over the complex series of events that a pervasive marketplace will immediately set in motion. Insider abuse, self-dealing, and back scratching relationships between institutions will run rampant"

All "unexpected" eh Al? Eh Congress?

No.

Not unexpected.

In fact, you were explicitly warned what would happen.

You did Wall Street's bidding, and exactly what was predicted happened.


Wall Street took the money, speculated with it, and blew serial bubble after bubble, with the explicit permission of both Congress and Federal Reserve, and the consequence has been the destruction of our economy.

Take responsibility Congress, repeal your erroneous laws, including the EESA/TARP and put Glass-Steagall back in place.

Appoint a special prosecutor - in fact, dozens of them - to investigate everyone involved, including Henry Paulson, and indict each and every one of them who committed an act of inside dealing or selling products with knowing or negligently inflated valuations.

Oh, and stop lying to America.

The record is what it is and we the people are tired of the lies and bailouts you expect us to pay for, when you were explicitly warned that what your cronies on Wall Street wanted would lead to precisely this result.

Now our 401ks are 201ks and the responsibility for what has happened, along with what is to come, squarely rests on Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Congress itself.

Grow a pair and stand up for America and Americans, not your corporate sponsors.

If Wall Street is at least as idiotic as this industry, and I have the reason to believe it is, then all that's needed is a few months of calm before the scammers come out with a new scheme to part the fools from their money. We've all seen it happen in this industry many times over and the incentives in the financial sector are a great many times bigger.

Paulson makes me wanna

People have too high of expectations. They expect to see 1 man predict every single scenario and understand and anticipate the business practices of everything thats possible or could one day be a possibility, even when its not their responsibility.

He did a good job, there was a lot of stuff he recommended on the fiscal policy side that went totally ignored, that would make things not nearly as bad as today, for example, years ago he begged congress to reinstate legislation that mandated the checks and balances so the budget was balanced, it got repealed. this is one of the main reasons why the dollar is so weak today.

lastly, he was the chairman of the fed. the main regulatory body is the SEC, which he has no role with respect to regulatory things. his main roles and responsibilities are essentially monetary policy decisions - adjusting federal funds rates and supply of money using open market comittee. all people can say is that he kept rates for too low, thus causing an environment of lending, but at end of day, how the fuck is he supposed to know all the shady shit these companies were doing and what impact they (brand new complex financial instruments) had? very few people understood any of it, including the people who created them, made all their money from them, and now whose companies are imploding because of them. you can only ask for so much from one person... :2cents

yeah what a fuckmunch

yeah i was similiar naive until i saw prechecked cross sales on adult elite's 'cancel subscr.' forms ;-)

This about sums it up for me, although he is not the only one to blame, where was the SEC, out to lunch with the Wall Street buddies?

No kidding. Isn't this the person who said it wouldn't happen in the first place for the exact same reasons?

this is a great thread!

Just an example of deregulation and creative accounting.

AIG sold protection on $441 billion of fixed-income investments, including $57.8 billion in securities tied to subprime mortgages. The swaps plunged in value as the assets they guaranteed declined, forcing $25 billion in writedowns over nine months and leading to three quarterly losses.

``We kind of lost our way, AIG did, and we got out of the basic insurance business that we know so well,'' Liddy said. ``Within the first two or three weeks of taking that loan, we were at the $69 billion level, so anyone who thinks we didn't need the Federal Reserve as a lifesaver simply doesn't understand the precarious nature of where we were.''

`A Lifeline'

The government ``threw us a lifeline which we desperately needed so that the rest of the financial system wouldn't be contaminated,'' he said.

Liddy told employees on Sept. 18 that the original $85 billion loan was ``a really big number, I think that's enough.'' In an Oct. 3 conference call with analysts, he said that he didn't want to state the company would ``never'' need more.

``One of the lessons from the savings and loan crisis is that firms that were going under forestalled the recognition of how severe the problem was through accounting, and with the cooperation of regulators,'' Bergman said. ``I certainly hope that's not happening with AIG today.''

I think it is all just one big misunderstanding.

It'll all clear up in a few days.

No.

When someone of that position makes a comment like that, you can bet your ass it is exactly the opposite of what he is saying.

He knows why, but to incriminate himself or his friends, never going to happen.

Like all of a sudden he's a fucking idiot? Come on now.

.. well.. the short version......... the government made it easy for people to afford flashlights and tricked them into thinking they were the real thing... now that the truth comes out and shit hit the fan... the average Joe realizes that real pussy is way too expensive ... so he realizes he can't afford it so and is now depressed and looking for the candidate who will allow him to afford a real pussy....

Greenspan just happened to be at the wrong place/time.... the man is innocent I tell ya!

Well who really does?