Greenspan Greenspan Greenspan!
He’s back, the gloves are off and he’s coming for your economy!
Look out everyone, the oracle hath spoken…
The “benevolent” era is over, inflation is on the rise and the problem will not be short lived.
Additionally, not only is there a housing bubble in America, but they have occurred all over the world!
These are some of the “revealing” concepts Greenspan is now putting forward as he makes the rounds on the national TV talk shows pumping his new book “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World”.
Greenspan is either a little late to the party or, more likely, simply exercising a little legacy damage control in the face of the now obvious unwinding of his easy money days of the past.
Forgive me for feeling a little short changed when contemplating Greenspan’s suggestion that the Federal Reserve’s low funds rate between 2001 and 2004 and call for more innovative mortgage products in 2004 was not even partly to blame for inflating the US housing bubble since housing bubbles also occurred in as many as twenty other countries around the world.
It’s pretty hard for me to believe that he could seriously see US monetary policy as being totally isolated from affecting the other world economies and that our housing bubble is simply a result of some benevolent disinflationary era that independently affected the US and other major economies alike.
I suppose the new book and all the interviews will supply plenty of fodder for those that that would defend and others that are critical of Alan Greenspan’s legacy but one thing I have noticed seems to be now firmly unarguable.
Starting today, there IS a housing bubble in America and it is now in the process of unwinding.
All debate is over, it is now totally unequivocal given that Bears have been using this term for years and now, with Alan Greenspan’s gentle guidance, Bulls must join in the fray, a point that is positively clear after watching just a few hours of CNBC this morning.
