Bill Fleckenstein, MSN: "How Greenspan's policies hurt you"

[Glenda]

How Greenspan's policies hurt you
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/ContrarianChronicles/HowGreenspansPoliciesHurtYou.aspx?page=1

Interesting article. Some excerpts:

If Wall Street had a chisel, Alan Greenspan's smiling face would today be carved on Mount Rushmore. From the late 1980s until just recently, the Maestro, as an admiring journalist styled him, could seemingly do no wrong. He set interest rates -- always, so his fans insisted, the right rates. He presided over an economy that only rarely stumbled into recession or crisis. And when it did lose its way, the Greenspan Fed could be counted on to ease the pain with freshly printed dollars and low interest rates.
...

But consider how your own life has changed over the past few years. How have Greenspan's actions affected your stock portfolio, 401(k) or mortgage? Will you be better off for having lived through the Greenspan era, or will you be much poorer for having done so?

The truth is that the majority of Greenspan's decisions as Fed chairman from Aug. 11, 1987, to Jan. 31, 2006, were not beneficial to you, nor did they leave the country better off, despite Greenspan's glowing self-critique in his latest book, "The Age of Turbulence." In reality, the overwhelming majority of people in the United States will be worse off in the years ahead as a result of his stewardship.
...

The result was that during his reign, the United States experienced a bubble in stocks and then in real estate. These two massive bubbles emerged within 10 years of each other. Prior to Greenspan's arrival at the Fed, excluding the brief mania for commodities and precious metals from late 1979 to early 1980, the country had been bubble-free for more than 50 years.
...

That said, Greenspan's errors in judgment seemed so obvious they beg the questions: Why did he make them? Did he actually set out to redistribute wealth from the middle class to the rich while the country itself essentially burned the furniture for heat? After all, his bubbles made the sponsors of those bubbles fabulously wealthy, ultimately to the detriment of the average person and the United States as a whole. Or was he simply not up to the task?

Your opinion?

[snappyturtle]

1. I think he was very much up to the task....he just directed it toward

helping the upper class. imho

Now if the msm can just get Andrea Mitchell off the air. Everytime I see her I think of her husband and his hurtful economic ways.

[Glenda]

2. You might know more than I do...

I never really thought about it before, but when I was trying to save money, a bubble had just burst, and the interest rates were falling. And when I was trying to pay off debt, the interest rates were rising.

Neither case helped me, the little person. The interest rates were always the opposite of what i needed at the given time. I thought it was just coincidence until now :think:

[Glenda]

3. kick

:kick: