Former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan said a ``once-in-a-century credit tsunami'' has engulfed financial markets and conceded his free-market ideology shunning regulation was flawed.
``Yes, I found a flaw,'' Greenspan said in response to grilling from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. ``I was shocked because I'd been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.'' Greenspan added he was ``partially'' wrong for opposing the regulation of derivatives.
Greenspan's contrition came after lawmakers and Fed watchers increasingly blamed the former Fed chairman for helping cause the crisis with lax oversight of the housing boom and derivatives markets. Normally afforded deference by Congress, he endured almost four hours of questions from lawmakers less than two weeks before a national election.
``Greenspan is finally taking some responsibility for his actions,'' said the director of economic research at Northern Trust Co. in Chicago and a former Fed official. ``The damage has been done. His reputation has definitely been tarnished.''
Greenspan, responding to questions, said only ``onerous'' regulation would have prevented the economic collapse. Stifling rules would have suppressed growth and hurt Americans' standards of living, he said.
Part of the problem was that the Fed's ability to forecast the economy's trajectory is an inexact science, he said.
``If we are right 60 percent of the time in forecasting, we are doing exceptionally well; that means we are wrong 40 percent of the time,'' Greenspan said. ``Forecasting never gets to the point where it is 100 percent accurate.''
The admission that free markets have their faults was a shift for the former Fed chairman who declared in a May 2005 speech that ``private regulation generally has proved far better at constraining excessive risk-taking than has government regulation.''
Did you see that? He said ‘better at constraining excessive risk taking”? You gotta be kidding me. The problem is that the joke is on all of us.
Federal Debt Relief System believes it’s important that people know the truth so that they can make up their own minds.
See Also Bailout, America’s Debt Revolt
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