"Alan Greenspan, won't you please go home"

The only thing worse than the policies pursued by the former Fed chairman is the current book tour he has embarked upon to try to convince somebody he wasn't at fault for the 2008 financial crises. Alan has appeared everywhere recently to tout his book "The Map and the Territory". Greenspan is trying to justify the enormous mistakes he committed by implementing a deeply flawed monetary policy. Like all "experts" who are found to have feet of clay Alan acts like nobody could have foreseen the crash or everybody thought alike. This is 100% wrong. He was head of the Federal Reserve for god's sake! He is equating his knowledge with the average cab driver in NYC as to what is going on in the economy. Personally I think this is unfair to the cabbies who I believe had a clearer picture than Greenspan. Alan was too busy lapping up adulation from Congress to pay much attention to his real job.

The simple facts are that Greenspan was appointed by Ronald Reagan in August 1987. This was just in time to reap the whirlwind from the stock market crash in October and the Saving & Loans crises following the implosion of the junk bond market (not his fault). That economic set back was a mini 2008 and all the lessons that remained unlearned about unregulated lending activity by financial institutions came back to bite us in 2008. He had firsthand knowledge of how these events unfolded but now wants to believe that somehow people have changed the way they behave and "nobody" could have known.

In a larger sense it is time for many of our "leaders" to move on. Just because a guy has a dark suit and speaks in a deep voice the media acts as if everything he says is solid gold. This is regardless of the abysmal record of the individual's performance. So in addition to Mr. Greenspan, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Dick Cheney, John Bolton etc. should have the decency to exit stage left and be heard no more. This is based on their record of being wrong in most of their decisions and policies. It clearly transcends party affiliation.