{"id":520312,"date":"2010-04-08T09:21:39","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T13:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=81627"},"modified":"2010-04-08T09:21:39","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T13:21:39","slug":"the-maestro-attempts-to-rewrite-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/520312","title":{"rendered":"The Maestro Attempts to Rewrite History"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a quick follow to Annie’s nice wrap<\/a> of yesterday’s gathering of the commission investigating the recent financial crack-up, it’s worth noting that\u00a0Alan Greenspan — once contrite<\/a> about the “flaw” surrounding his blind trust of free markets — is now making the claim that he’d been warning all along about the looming collapse.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank today points out some of the more remarkable parts<\/a> of Greenspan’s testimony:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

“I warned of the consequences of this situation in testimony before the Senate banking committee in 2004,” he informed the commissioners Wednesday. “In 2002 I expressed concern . . . that our extraordinary housing boom, financed by very large increases in mortgage debt, cannot continue indefinitely.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Milbank then contrasts that with Greenspan’s remarks before the Joint Economic Committee in 2005:<\/p>\n

\n

“A bubble in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely.”<\/p>\n

“Home price declines . . . were they to occur, likely would not have substantial macroeconomic implications.”<\/p>\n

“Nationwide banking and widespread securitization of mortgages make it less likely that financial intermediation would be impaired.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the 84-year-old Greenspan — who was Fed chairman when Wall Street ramped up its interest in subprime loans, mortgage-backed securities, and a few of the other financial instruments that led to the collapse of the global economy — doesn’t want to be remembered as the guy who snoozed while the bubbles inflated. But neither should we let him rewrite history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a quick follow to Annie’s nice wrap of yesterday’s gathering of the commission investigating the recent financial crack-up, it’s worth noting that\u00a0Alan Greenspan — once contrite about the “flaw” surrounding his blind trust of free markets — is now making the claim that he’d been warning all along about the looming collapse. The Washington […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}