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Final note: Don't blame Greenspan
Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan speaking in the U.K.
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TEXT OF FINAL NOTE
Kai Ryssdal: This final note today, in which Alan Greenspan says "Hey, that whole housing crash financial crisis thing? Not my fault."
Greenspan has done what economists do when they want to prove a point. He has written a research paper. He'll present it at the Brookings Institution tomorrow. It's forty-eight pages long, that's text, and then there are appendices, charts, graphs and all that.
But you can skip right to the relevant passage on page 37, the part where he says the low interest rates he set while he was running the Federal Reserve had absolutely nothing do do with it. Check it out for yourself. The link is above.
Greenspan was also one of those neo-cons who argued for the destruction of Glass-Steagall, the repeal of which ultimately allowed subprime mortgages to be repackaged and hidden in derivatives, poisoning the world financial systems.
He is absolutely responsible.
