March 22, 2010
On Friday, March 19, former Federal Reserve chair, Alan Greenspan appeared before the Brookings Institution to present his 48-page paper entitled, “The Crisis”. The obvious subject of the paper concerned the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. With this document, Greenspan attempted to add his own spin to history, for the sake of restoring his tattered public image. The man once known as “The Maestro” had fallen into the orchestra pit and was struggling to preserve his prestige. After the release of his paper on Friday, there has been no shortage of criticism, despite Greenspan’s “enlightened” change of attitude concerning bank regulation. Greenspan’s refusal to admit the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy had anything to do with causing the crisis has placed him directly in the crosshairs of more than a few critics.
Sewell Chan of The New York Times provided this summary of Greenspan’s paper:
Mr. Greenspan, who has long argued that the market is often a more effective regulator than the government, has now adopted a more expansive view of the proper role of the state.
He argues that regulators should enforce collateral and capital requirements, limit or ban certain kinds of concentrated bank lending, and even compel financial companies to develop “living wills” that specify how they are to be liquidated in an orderly way.
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. . . Mr. Greenspan warned that “megabanks” formed through mergers created the potential for “unusually large systemic risks” should they fail.
Mr. Greenspan added: “Regrettably, we did little to address the problem.”
That is as close as Greenspan came to admitting that the Federal Reserve had a role in helping to cause the financial crisis. Nevertheless, these magic words from page 39 of “The Crisis” are what got everybody jumping:
To my knowledge, that lowering of the federal funds rate nearly a decade ago was not considered a key factor in the housing bubble.
The best retort to this denial of reality came from Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation. His essay entitled, “Explaining the Impact of Ultra-Low Rates to Greenspan” is a must read. Here’s how Ritholtz concluded the piece:
The lack of regulatory enforcement was a huge factor in allowing the credit bubble to inflate, and set the stage for the entire credit crisis. But it was intricately interwoven with the ultra low rates Alan Greenspan set as Fed Chair.
So while he is correct in pointing out that his own failures as a bank regulator are in part to blame, he needs to also recognize that his failures in setting monetary policy was also a major factor.
In other words, his incompetence as a regulator made his incompetence as a central banker even worse.
Paul La Monica wrote an interesting post for CNN Money’s The Buzz blog entitled, “Greenspan and Bernanke still don’t get it”. He was similarly unimpressed with Greenspan’s denial that Fed monetary policy helped cause the crisis:
This argument is getting tiresome. Keeping rates so low helped inflate the bubble.
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“The Fed wasn’t the sole culprit. But if not for an artificially steep yield curve, we probably would not have had a global financial crisis,” said John Norris, managing director of wealth management with Oakworth Capital Bank in Birmingham, Ala.
“Greenspan and Bernanke are missing the point. It all stems from monetary policy,” Norris added. “If you give bankers an inducement to lend more than they ordinarily would they are going to do so.”
From across the pond, Stephen Foley wrote a great article for The Independent entitled, “For the wrong answers, turn to Greenspan”. He began the piece this way:
The former US Federal Reserve chairman, the wizened wiseman of laissez-faire economics, shocked us all — and probably himself — when he told a congressional panel in 2008 that he had found “a flaw in the model I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak”. He meant that he had realised banks cannot be trusted to manage their own risks, and that markets do not smoothly self-correct.
But instead of taking that revelation and helping to point the way to a new, post-crisis financial world, he has shuddered to an intellectual halt. It is the same intellectual stop sign that Wall Street’s bankers are at. The failure to move forward is regrettable, dangerous and more than a little self-serving.
These reactions to Greenspan’s paper are surely just the beginning of an overwhelming backlash. The Economist has already weighed in and before too long, we might even see a movie documenting the Fed’s responsibility for helping to cause The Great Recession.
An Army Of Lobbyists For The Middle Class
Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke appeared before the Senate Banking Committee this week to testify about the Fed’s monetary policy. Scot Kersgaard of The American Independent focused our attention on a five-minute exchange between Colorado Senator Michael Bennett and The Ben Bernank, with an embedded video clip. Senator Bennett asked Bernanke to share his opinions concerning the recommendations made by President Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission. Bernanke initially attempted to dodge the question with the disclaimer that the Fed’s authority extends to only monetary policy rather than fiscal policy – such as the work conducted by the deficit commission. If Congressman Ron Paul had been watching the hearing take place, I’m sure he had a good, hard laugh at that statement. Nevertheless, Bernanke couldn’t restrain himself from concurring with the effort to place the cost of Wall Street’s larceny on the backs of middle-class taxpayers.
The chant for “entitlement reform” continues to reverberate throughout the mainstream media as it has for the past year. Last May, economist Dean Baker exposed this latest effort toward upward wealth redistribution:
A key propaganda tactic used by the “entitlement reform” crusaders is to characterize Social Security as an “entitlement” even though it is not (as I discussed here). Phil Davis, avowed capitalist and self-described “serial entrepreneur”, wrote a great essay, which refuted the claim that Social Security is “broken” while explaining why it is not an “entitlement”. Unfortunately, there are very few politicians who are willing to step forward to provide the simple explanation that Social Security is not an entitlement. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) recently made a statement to that effect before a senior citizens’ group in East Haven, Connecticut – without really providing an explanation why it is not an entitlement. Susan Feiner wrote a great commentary on the subject last fall for womensenews.org. Here is some of what she said:
The attempt to mischaracterize Social Security as an “entitlement” is not a “Right vs. Left” dispute — It’s a class warfare issue. There have been commentaries from across the political spectrum emphasizing the same fact: Social Security is not an “entitlement”. The assertion has appeared on the conservative patriotsteaparty.net website, the DailyKos on the Left and in a piece by independent commentator, Marti Oakley.
The battle for “entitlement reform” is just one front in the larger war being waged by Wall Street against the middle class. Kevin Drum discussed this conflict in a recent posting at his Plutocracy Now blog for Mother Jones:
One of my favorite commentators, Paul Farrell of MarketWatch made this observation on March 1:
On February 21, I quoted a statement made by bond guru Bill Gross of PIMCO, which included this thought:
That essay by Bill Gross became the subject of an article by Terrence Keeley of Bloomberg News. Mr. Keeley’s reaction to the suggestions made by Bill Gross was this:
Perhaps the most constructive solution to the problem is my suggestion from February 10: Recruit and employ an army of lobbyists to represent and advance the interests of the middle class on Capitol Hill. Some type of non-partisan, “citizens’ lobby” could be created as an online community. Once its lobbying goals are developed and articulated, an online funding drive would begin. The basic mission would be to defend middle-class taxpayers from the tyranny of the plutocracy that is destroying not just the middle class – but the entire nation. Fight lobbyists with lobbyists!