What a shameless lying stupid hog.
Tying together digusting threads, he gave an interview on Leonard Lopate this morning where he says that Ayn Rand cured him of his "flawed empirical thinking:"
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/2007/09/17
[The quote is from a friend; I couldn't actually bear to listen to it to confirm.]
Below is Krugman explaining quite crushingly why Greenspan is a liar.
BTW, if anyone wants to heckle him, he's speaking and signing books at the Union Square B&N at 7pm. Normally you have to pay 100 grand to hear his wisdom.
==============
The New York Times
September 17, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Sad Alans Lament
By PAUL KRUGMAN
When President Bush first took office, it seemed unlikely that he would
succeed in getting his proposed tax cuts enacted. The questionable
nature of his installation in the White House seemed to leave him in a
weak political position, while the Senate was evenly balanced between
the parties. It was hard to see how a huge, controversial tax cut,
which delivered most of its benefits to a wealthy elite, could get
through Congress.
Then Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified
before the Senate Budget Committee.
Until then Mr. Greenspan had presented himself as the voice of fiscal
responsibility, warning the Clinton administration not to endanger its
hard-won budget surpluses. But now Republicans held the White House,
and the Greenspan who appeared before the Budget Committee was a very
different man.
Suddenly, his greatest concern the emerging key fiscal policy need, he
told Congress was to avert the threat that the federal government might
actually pay off all its debt. To avoid this awful outcome, he
advocated tax cuts. And the floodgates were opened.
As it turns out, Mr. Greenspans fears that the federal government would
quickly pay off its debt were, shall we say, exaggerated. And Mr.
Greenspan has just published a book in which he castigates the Bush
administration for its fiscal irresponsibility.
Well, Im sorry, but that criticism comes six years late and a trillion
dollars short.
Mr. Greenspan now says that he didnt mean to give the Bush tax cuts a
green light, and that he was surprised at the political reaction to his
remarks. There were, indeed, rumors at the time which Mr. Greenspan now
says were true that the Fed chairman was upset about the response to
his initial statement.
But the fact is that if Mr. Greenspan wasnt intending to lend crucial
support to the Bush tax cuts, he had ample opportunity to set the
record straight when it could have made a difference.
His first big chance to clarify himself came a few weeks after that
initial testimony, when he appeared before the Senate Committee on
Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
Heres what I wrote following that appearance: Mr. Greenspans
performance yesterday, in his first official testimony since he let the
genie out of the bottle, was a profile in cowardice. Again and again he
was offered the opportunity to say something that would help rein in
runaway tax-cutting; each time he evaded the question, often replying
by reading from his own previous testimony. He declared once again that
he was speaking only for himself, thus granting himself leeway to
pronounce on subjects far afield of his role as Federal Reserve
chairman. But when pressed on the crucial question of whether the huge
tax cuts that now seem inevitable are too large, he said it was
inappropriate for him to comment on particular proposals.
In short, Mr. Greenspan defined the rules of the game in a way that
allows him to intervene as he likes in the political debate, but to
retreat behind the veil of his office whenever anyone tries to hold him
accountable for the results of those interventions.
I received an irate phone call from Mr. Greenspan after that article,
in which he demanded to know what he had said that was wrong. In his
book, he claims that Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, was
stumped by that question. Thats hard to believe, because I certainly
wasnt: Mr. Greenspans argument for tax cuts was contorted and in places
self-contradictory, not to mention based on budget projections that
everyone knew, even then, were wildly overoptimistic.
If anyone had doubts about Mr. Greenspans determination not to
inconvenience the Bush administration, those doubts were resolved two
years later, when the administration proposed another round of tax
cuts, even though the budget was now deep in deficit. And guess what?
The former high priest of fiscal responsibility did not object.
And in 2004 he expressed support for making the Bush tax cuts permanent
remember, these are the tax cuts he now says he didnt endorse and
argued that the budget should be balanced with cuts in entitlement
spending, including Social Security benefits, instead. Of course, back
in 2001 he specifically assured Congress that cutting taxes would not
threaten Social Security.
In retrospect, Mr. Greenspans moral collapse in 2001 was a portent. It
foreshadowed the way many people in the foreign policy community would
put their critical faculties on hold and support the invasion of Iraq,
despite ample evidence that it was a really bad idea.
And like enthusiastic war supporters who have started describing
themselves as war critics now that the Iraq venture has gone wrong, Mr.
Greenspan has started portraying himself as a critic of administration
fiscal irresponsibility now that President Bush has become deeply
unpopular and Democrats control Congress.