Alan Greenspan: "The Fed Didn't Cause the Housing Bubble"

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by Daal, Mar 11, 2009.

  1. Not to "hijack" the thread, but you live in South Florida now???:D

    Note: Pabst about to make his 5,000th post on ET!
     
    #21     Mar 11, 2009
  2. I've been going back to Chicago less and less. Current temp in Chi-town=19. Miami? 75 and cloudless.......

     
    #22     Mar 11, 2009
  3. as ayn rand's economic editor of her objectivist newsletter in the 1960s, he knew better than anyone what he was doing

    that's why i judge him so harshly
     
    #23     Mar 11, 2009
  4. lrm21

    lrm21

    my main point

    BUBBLES ARE NORMAL!!

    I still don't understand why even Greenspan, or almost everyone esle fall into the trap of semantics by acting as if a market bubble or irrational decisions are not normal and who is to blame for what, as if normality would have been maintained had certain decesions not been mande.

    Markets are based on human behaviors. Humans tend to act irrationally on occasion. Markets reflect.

    The question isn't who or what caused a bubble it is; how much responsibility do governments and its pseudo agencies have for the extreme tails in normal periods of over investment, and then subsequent extremes in underinvestment as they course correct by attacking the very nature of free markets.

    The double jeopardy question.

    Based on the enormous wealth destruction that has occured in the past 24 months. Can any sane man argue that we are so much better off because we have
    Federal Reserves (Private agency I know)
    SEC
    Department of Treasury

    100's of thousand if not close to millions of pages of regulatory codes on the financial markets backed by a small army of regulators.

    Imagine a world where these institutions existed at 25% of their current capacity or did not exist at all would we be worse off?
     
    #25     Mar 11, 2009
  5. It was not the interest rates that caused the bubble. It was the acts by the Fed in the 1990s allowing Level III assets, mortgage derivatives & credit default swaps.

    Why are people even paying attention to what Greenspan says? It's like having a mob boss explain how what he does is only good deeds.
     
    #27     Mar 11, 2009
  6. there is a youtube video of george bush jr back in 2002-2003...post 911.

    on this news coverage, with logos of fannie and freddie behind him, he specifically says that it was time for the under-privileged and minority to have a chance at owning a home.
     
    #28     Mar 11, 2009
  7. Regardless of the aim toward lax lending standards pushed by politicians, the banks will not give a mortgage that is a near guaranteed default. The only reason for them to do so if there are profits to be made in the securitization process. Most of these mortgages did not go to minorities, anyway.

    If you're blaming this on lending standards for minorities, you're not getting what is going on.
     
    #29     Mar 11, 2009
  8. gnome

    gnome

    No, they're not. Most have been caused by Gummint SCREWING WITH THE MONEY... (I don't know what was behind the Great Tulip Bubble)...

    This bubble was entirely preventable... and with GreenScam claiming, "couldn't see it coming"... he's either a bald-faced liar or too stupid to have ever had that job. :mad:
     
    #30     Mar 11, 2009