http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/3618477.htmlBy FROMA HARROP
Alan Greenspan may be "the greatest central banker who ever lived," two Princeton economists asserted last year. Worship at the Church of Greenspan had reached such a feverish pitch that when Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called the Federal Reserve chairman "one of the biggest political hacks" in Washington, even fellow Democrats shushed him.
It now appears that Reid has lots of company. Top economic minds are saying that Greenspan was not a great central banker — or even a good one. He was an enabler of the reckless Bush deficits. And their economic policy was designed to serve the appetites of adults living for today, and let the next generation be damned.
The cover of The Economist magazine has a cartoon of Greenspan handing the next Fed chairman a lit dynamite stick representing the economy. Greenspan's legacy, the magazine says, will be "the biggest economic imbalances in American history."
Paul Volcker, who preceded Greenspan as Federal Reserve chairman, says there is now a 75 percent chance that America's two monster deficits — the budget and trade deficits — could "wreck the international financial system" in the next few years...