GreenSPIN: Alan the Ungreat tries to revise history

[marmar]

Greenspan: Subprime loans did not cause financial crisis
Inquiry commission says former Fed chief ignored warnings about subprime

By Ronald D. Orol, MarketWatch


WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- An insatiable global appetite for packaged pools of high-risk mortgages was a significant contributor to the financial crisis, not the subprime loans themselves, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told a government-appointed inquiry panel in defense of his tenure on Wednesday.

"In my judgment, the origination of subprime mortgages -- as opposed to the rise in global demand for securitized subprime-mortgage interests -- was not a significant cause of the financial crisis," Greenspan told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which is conducting a series of hearings and investigations into what brought the economy to the brink in September 2008.

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Greenspan was criticized for holding the central bank's interest rates too low for too long, contributing to the crisis, and also for failing to use the Fed's responsibility to protect consumers from subprime and other problem mortgages that were a key contributor to the financial crisis.

Specifically, the former Fed chief -- and his successor Ben Bernanke -- have been criticized for failing to employ the central bank's authority to supervise, write and enforce strong consumer-protection regulations for mortgage and credit-card products. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/greenspan-housing-bubble-was-not-created-by-fed-2010-04-07

[theoldman]

1. The chairman is only as good as the president who leads him.

Note that Greenspan did a fairly good job when Clinton was president and a bad job when Bush became president. The Federal Reserve is not as independent as they claim they are.

[marmar]

2. I don't know about that.....a lot of this CDS madness got started under Clinton.