Monday, April 5, 2010

I SAW THE CRISIS COMING. WHY DIDN'T THE FED

NYT Op-Ed--"I have often wondered why nobody in Washington showed any interest in hearing exactly how I arrived at my conclusions that the housing bubble would burst when it did and that it could cripple the big financial institutions. A week ago I learned the answer when Al Hunt of Bloomberg Television, who had read Michael Lewis’s book, “The Big Short,” which includes the story of my predictions, asked Mr. Greenspan directly. The former Fed chairman responded that my insights had been a “statistical illusion.” Perhaps, he suggested, I was just a supremely lucky flipper of coins.

Mr. Greenspan said that he sat through innumerable meetings at the Fed with crack economists, and not one of them warned of the problems that were to come. By Mr. Greenspan’s logic, anyone who might have foreseen the housing bubble would have been invited into the ivory tower, so if all those who were there did not hear it, then no one could have said it.

As a nation, we cannot afford to live with Mr. Greenspan’s way of thinking. The truth is, he should have seen what was coming and offered a sober, apolitical warning."

Michael Burry, I Saw the Crisis Coming. Why Didn't the Fed. (NYT Op-Ed: here)

WB7: Mr Greenspan's timely bloviatory about how and why nothing could have been foreseen or avoided is one big intellectual Repo 105.

Those elected officials who must now consider whether it is better to rely on the enlightened judgment of bureaucrats than to dismantle the 2Big2Fail before they have a chance to make a repeat performance, should carefully consider Mr Greenspan's blatant lack of mea culpa.

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