Going after Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, these days is like shooting dead fish in a drained-out bathtub. But Thomas Edsall spanks the onetime Oracle something awful in HuffPo. The piece opens:
On June 10, 1999, at the height of his power, Alan Greenspan told members of Harvard’s graduating class how, in the future, they should assess their lives: “The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.”
As Edsall goes on to detail, there’s now plenty of bloody mess in Greenspan’s wake. He notes that Greenspan had a hand in most of the major regulatory actions (or, put more accurately, non-actions) that led to the current collapse of capitalism as we (and he) know it. These days, the former acolyte of Ayn Rand is advocating the “temporary” nationalization” of “lemon banks” to “facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring.” From free-market laissez-faire to corporate socialism, what a long, strange trip it’s been. Too bad he took the rest of us on it.