{"id":3143,"date":"2008-10-24T12:40:05","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T19:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2008\/10\/24\/new-wrinkle-in-the-alan-greenspan-paradox\/"},"modified":"2008-10-24T12:43:22","modified_gmt":"2008-10-24T19:43:22","slug":"new-wrinkle-in-the-alan-greenspan-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2008\/10\/24\/new-wrinkle-in-the-alan-greenspan-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"new wrinkle in the Alan Greenspan Paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am pretty sure I have already described my low level fascination with Alan Greenspan in the 1990s.\u00c2\u00a0 It sprang from his “Irrational Exuberance” comment, the fact that the comments were meant to taper down stock market speculation, presumably in\u00c2\u00a0a mid-term time-period, yet in the mid-term range — after a short “tapering down” — rose rather spectacularly.\u00c2\u00a0 It seemed a paradox to me:\u00c2\u00a0 Is this man the most powerful person in our Financial World, or the most Impotent?\u00c2\u00a0 The answer was both and neither.<\/p>\n

Years later, he finally hit his denoument.\u00c2\u00a0 And we get this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Representative Henry A. Waxman<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0of California, chairman of the committee. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Greenspan conceded: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve found a flaw<\/strong>. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how significant or permanent it is. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been very distressed by that fact.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

“Found a flaw.”\u00c2\u00a0 I know what happened.\u00c2\u00a0 Alan Greenspan\u00c2\u00a0simply forgot to\u00c2\u00a0carry the one — about five digits to the right of the decimal point.\u00c2\u00a0 Most mistakes are just that simple, just a brief lapse of concentration.\u00c2\u00a0 This is why you always show your work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am pretty sure I have already described my low level fascination with Alan Greenspan in the 1990s.\u00c2\u00a0 It sprang from his “Irrational Exuberance” comment, the fact that the comments were meant to taper down stock market speculation, presumably in\u00c2\u00a0a mid-term time-period, yet in the mid-term range — after a short “tapering down” — rose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}