Don’t Blame Me, ‘Cause Alan Greenspan Started It!
By: Smart Profits Report Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:47 PM
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According to one MSN Money blogger, we’re still debating who’s to blame for the economic mess we’re in. Mr. Anthony Mirhaydari makes the case that there’s a single person to blame for the housing bubble: Alan Greenspan.
Mirhaydari makes a decent case against the former Fed chief, citing that Greenspan “preferred to focus on short-term interest rates… and largely ignored the growth in the money supply as irrelevant.” Considering the here-and-now while simultaneously ignoring the future is never a good model to adhere to, if that is indeed what Greenspan was doing. And regardless of whether the case is stronger for or against the man, it is true that his policies when combined with others enacted at the same time made for a dangerous mix.
But that’s just the point… It was a mix as in more than one element - or in this case person - involved. Though it isn’t getting nearly enough focus, Congress has to take more than it’s fair share of the blame for at best blindly ignoring problems in the housing market and at worst actively encouraging reckless policies.
Without Greenspan, they might not have been able to take advantage of the situation in order to implement “affordable housing” for all, but only they can be held accountable for their actions. Alan Greenspan didn’t hold a gun to their head and tell them that they had to enact destructive policies “or else.” So allowing members of Congress to point their fingers at anybody else is inexcusable.
Equally inexcusable are the citizens who then went and took advantage of the system laid out before them. Who spends hundreds of thousands of money that they don’t have without doing proper research into it?
There’s an easy answer to that, though it’s hardly flattering: people who were either too lazy or too trusting to look into the details. And one way or the other, it was irresponsible and foolish to bite off more than they could chew. They can only blame themselves for the predicaments they’re in now. Congress didn’t twist their arm anymore than Alan Greenspan did.
Of course there are other groups that can be targeted who either directly assisted in creating the housing bubble, or through action or inaction, made it worse: presidents, foreign countries, individuals within the government or in the private sector. But my larger point is that there’s a lot of blame to go around, and it’s time that people start accepting some of it like mature adults instead of resorting to the same old arguments of “But he started it!” they were using back in grade school.
Thursday, March 12, 2009 - by Jeannette Di Louie, Assistant Editor, Mt. Vernon Research