"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Oops

Aww. It's just a little boo-boo. We still love you Alan.
Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, told a House panel that he “made a mistake” in trusting that free markets could regulate themselves.

6 comments:

EliRabett said...

Although bunnies are mammels, the milk of kindness is not one of those things that run through our veins. The Roman's had the right idea

Anonymous said...

Well he should relax because he was quite right in the first place, the 'free' market has 'regulated' itself. As always it causes a lot of pain and angst but a correction occurs. This stands in contradistinction to state-run economies in which no mistakes are permitted, or at least, never owned up to, and thus there is never a correction - everybody just gets poorer and poorer; as you are about to find out now that your government will be, in effect, "commanding the heights of the economy" and your new socialist president prepares grab hold of all that extra power.

Er, "enjoy", I think is the correct American expression!

David Duff

Michael Tobis said...

The idea that Obama is socialist is perfectly bizarre. Not that there is anything all that awful about socialism, just that if the word applies to Obama it would seem to have lost all trace of meaning.

How reassuring it is, though, save perhaps for the innocent bystander or two whose retirement plans are demolished, that the marketplace is self-correcting.

Indeed, if the marketplace extinguishes us altogether it might eventually be viewed as a healthy marketplace correction in favor of a more prudent competing species now emerging on some other distant planet.

For some reason I am not reassured by this rough justice in the universe.

Dano said...

"mistakes were made" my *ss.

Best,

D

Michael Tobis said...

Dano, I believe him.

Greenspan genuinely didn't think the financial institutions could be this irresponsible.

I didn't think they'd give them THAT long of a leash. That was the mistake I made. Fortunately for me, my mistake was relatively inconsequential.

Unfortunately for all of us, Greenspan's wasn't.

Dano said...

Michael,

half the time I decided to wade thru his obfuscatory declarations from on high, I heard a lot of propping up of ideology.

He may believe what he said, but IMHO it was because the blinders he was wearing didn't allow him to see all the information.

Best,

D