As if Greenspan were not feeble enough already he is sounding off on FinReg these days -
Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has attacked the Dodd-Frank financial reforms warning they could create the “largest regulatory-induced market distortion” in the US since the imposition of wage and price controls in 1971.
http://www.ft.com/...
(as are all quotes - FT)
Greenspan has doubled down on his crazy!
Greenspan was famous for his 1995-2005 saying that "Markets always self correct" - which may be true but invites serious harm to all of us 300 million who participate in the market in one way or another.
And now he is gone off the track again and people listen! See -
Mr Greenspan says the reforms, passed by Congress last year, would be impossible to implement, distortive to markets and a possible threat to US living standards
Larger than the 23% of all US household wealth that evaporated 2007-2009? Amazing - the good regulations in Dodd-Frank are a threat to us! Putting derivatives into an open market are a THREAT! Holding rating agencies accountable are a THREAT! Establishing a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a THREAT!
I am flabbergasted at this old imbecile man! This is a WTF moment!
To their credit, FT fights back with a finding from the FCIC report -
“More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and others, supported by successive administrations and Congresses, and actively pushed by the powerful financial industry at every turn, had stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe.”
Thank you!
Key safeguards were stripped away! Capital standards vanished!
The FDIC is on the hook for all losses while bank executive salaries escalated!
So what is happening now?
Members of the House financial services committee, including Spencer Bachus, chairman, have blocked funding increases for the Securities and Exchange Commission and railed against a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The GOP wants to kill FinReg!
And what does Paul Volcker - liberal past Fed Chair say?
Other than the cash machine, Mr Volcker said, in 2009, “I wish that somebody would give me some shred of neutral evidence about the relationship between financial innovation recently and the growth of the economy”.
Please never tell me that there is no difference between a liberal and wingnut again!