Jeffrey Sachs Rails against Ex-Fed Chief Greenspan * October 6, 2009, 3:44 PM ET http://blogs.wsj.com/worldbusinessf...y-sachs-rails-against-ex-fed-chief-greenspan/ By Kelly Evans Jeffrey Sachs, a prolific economist, author and professor at Columbia University, had unusually harsh words in his speech today directed at Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve â placing him with much of the blame for the current financial crisis. âThe essence of the current downturn is finance,â Mr. Sachs said. âItâs a Wall Street crisis. A crisis made down the block.â He said, and âif you look under the rubble you can figure out what happened and why.â First, âa long bout of easy credit championed by Alan Greenspan and the Fed outside of the normal boundaries of monetary policy,â which came together with âa nearly complete deregulation of the financial sector contrary to almost everything we know about the risks of a highly leveraged financial system.â âThis is flagrant irresponsibility,â he said. âThis isnât a matter of oneâs market philosophy, just profound irresponsibility.â Later, though, he said Mr. Greenspanâs ideology was possibly at fault, given his âAyn Randâ philosophy that markets take care of themselves âuntil he discovered the flaw of his theory later.â Mr. Sachs also spoke harshly of the Clinton and Bush administrations. âWe arrived at this cliff through the aggressively irresponsibility of two U.S. administrations in a row,â he said, accusing them of bending to the will of the nationâs biggest lobbying group â the financial industry. âWhere were the regulators? Consciously and deliberately kept out of the scene,â he said. âThis led to a bubble financially that was most notable in the housing sectorâ¦and Alan Greenspan added fuel to the fire by keeping interest rates around 1%â from 2002 through early 2005. âYou get credit for stopping a Depression but I donât want to give too much credit because the people who stopped it were the people who started it also,â said Mr. Sachs. <object id="wsj_fp" width="512" height="363"><param name="movie" value="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/main.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="flashvars" value="videoGUID={F8DD21D2-C4FB-4E94-9F0B-B4B571B92167}&playerid=1000&plyMediaEnabled=1&configURL=http://wsj.vo.llnwd.net/o28/players/&autoStart=false" base="rtmpt://wsj.fcod.llnwd.net/a1318/o28/video"name="main"></param><embed src="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/main.swf" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"flashVars="videoGUID={F8DD21D2-C4FB-4E94-9F0B-B4B571B92167}&playerid=1000&plyMediaEnabled=1&configURL=http://wsj.vo.llnwd.net/o28/players/&autoStart=false" base="rtmpt://wsj.fcod.llnwd.net/a1318/o28/video" name="main" width="512" height="363" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed></object>
Lobbying is outright Bribery. Remove Bribery in politics and we may get some decent politicians. What we have now is Corporate Fascism and their Republican protectors destroying every American institution Look at the current health care debate. You have insurance monopolies paying 10's of millions to republicans to stone wall any viable solution to sky rocketing costs. Entire system is corrupted by corporate fascists and their tools confusing the dumb voter Politics should be financed only by public funds.