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KAI RYSSDAL: The Federal Reserve released the minutes of its most recent meeting today. It’s a somewhat sanitized peek into the Fed’s deliberations of a couple of weeks ago. Which makes the words they did use all the more sobering. Apparently some members of the Federal Open Market Committee said they were worried about “a prolonged and severe economic downturn.”

Nowhere was the name Alan Greenspan mentioned in those minutes. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the former Fed chief has embarked on a public relations campaign as criticism of his interest rate cutting spree of earlier this decade has mounted. He’s had an op-ed or two the past couple of days. The Wall Street Journal had a nice write-up this morning. And he said this afternoon on CNBC he’s got no regrets about any of his policies.

ALAN GREENSPAN: Clearly, certain of our anticipations of what would happen as a consequence of those policies were off, but there’s no way of avoiding that. If we can get forecasts right 60 percent of the time, we’re doing extraordinarily well.

Whether or not the 40 percent that the Greenspan Fed got wrong caused the credit crunch has yet to be seen. he did say, the way, that we are now in the throes of a recession.