"No One Is to Blame for Anything"-Frank Rich (Greenspan, Rubin, Bushies, the press, &Obama)must read

[underpants]

It is hard to pick just a few paragraphs from this fantastic article


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/opinion/11rich.html

“I was right 70 percent of the time, but I was wrong 30 percent of the time,” said Alan Greenspan as he testified last week on Capitol Hill. Greenspan — a k a the Oracle during his 18-year-plus tenure as Fed chairman — could not have more vividly illustrated how and why geniuses of his stature were out to lunch while Wall Street imploded. No doubt he applied his full brain power to that 70-30 calculation. But the big picture eludes him. If the captain of the Titanic followed the Greenspan model, he could claim he was on course at least 70 percent of the time too.

Greenspan was testifying to the commission trying to pry loose the still incomplete story of how the American economy was driven at full speed into its iceberg. He was eager to portray himself as an innocent bystander to forces beyond his control. In his rewriting of history, his clout in Washington was so slight that he was ineffectual at “influencing the Congress.” The “roots” of the crisis, he lectured, dated back to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In other words: Wherever the buck stops, you had better believe it’s not within several thousand miles of the Oracle. As he has previously said in defending his inability to spot the colossal bubble, “Everybody missed it — academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators.”

That, of course, is not true. In last Sunday’s Times, one of those who predicted the bubble’s burst — Michael Burry, an investor chronicled in “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis — told in detail of how Greenspan and others in power “either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted” the reckless boom and the ensuing bust. But Greenspan is nothing if not a representative leader of his time. We live in a culture where accountability and responsibility are forgotten values. When “mistakes are made” they are always made by someone else.

That, of course, is no more true than Greenspan’s claim that “everyone” was ignorant of the potentially catastrophic dangers in the securitization of subprime mortgages. There were dissenters in the press, intelligence agencies and Congress who did doubt the W.M.D. evidence and asked tough questions akin to those asked by financial apostates like Michael Burry during the housing bubble. But these dissenting voices were either ignored, ridiculed or censored in the feverish rally to war just as voices like Burry’s were marginalized in the feverish rally of the Dow.

Americans still waiting on Main Street for the recovery that lifted Wall Street once invested their hopes in Obama. Getting the new era of responsibility only 70 percent right won’t do.

[Kahuna]

1. Did andrea greenspan report on her husband's testimony and how

he helped to wreck our economy? I doubt it.

[Enthusiast]

2. Me too. nt

[ShamelessHussy]

3. My wife who is from Japan always comments on this, she asks what is wrong with americans

and I am at a loss as what to say... I remember being taught while growing up that taking responsibility for your actions is a large part of being a good person.

but somewhere along the way, our culture has definitely changed and this kinda behavior has become ubiquitous and almost an art form.

:shakes-head:

[eppur_se_muova]

4. I'd like to see a poll taken in Japan ...

which members of the Bu**sh** administration should do the right thing and commit seppuku?

(I know, they don't do that anymore -- but some here should.)