Greenspan is Back

Greenspan is back. Maestro is scheduled to appear at the Brookings Institute today to deliver a 48 page explanation of why his low interest rates and regulatory neglect did not cause the financial meltdown. The contents of the ex-Fed chief's apologia have already been released to the press. It's just more finger-pointing and buck-passing; 48 pages of the-dog-ate-my-homework excuses in Greenspan's cryptic Fed-speak.

"We had been lulled into a sense of complacency by the modestly negative economic aftermaths of the stock market crash of 1987 and the dotcom 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."

See? It wasn't Greenspan's fault, after all. It was "the savings glut" or the "undercapitalised banks" or some other such nonsense. The bottom line is that everyone else was to blame for everything that went wrong. Everyone except the Teflon Fed chief, that is.'

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