Greenspan is the ultimate ‘Mr. Inflation’.

I have never been a fan of Easy Al and firmly believe that he has caused the US economy irreparable damage. He retired only in January 2006, but is already doing his utmost to explain his way out of his blunders that are now a causing a financial nightmare for his successor.
William Greider started his recent article in The Nation as follows: “Alan Greenspan has come back from the tomb of history to correct the record.
He did not make any mistakes in his eighteen-year tenure as Federal Reserve chairman. He did not endorse the regressive Bush tax cuts of 2001 that pumped up the federal deficits and aggravated inequalities. He did not cause the housing bubble that is now in collapse. He did not ignore the stock market bubble that subsequently melted away and cost investors $6 trillion. He did not say the Iraq War is ‘largely about oil’. Check the record. These are all lies.”

My precise sentiments regarding the Greenman were aired last week by Richard Russell, veteran writer of the Dow Theory Letters, when he said: “I finished the Greenspan book. I firmly believe that history will see this little egotistical pip-squeak as one of the premier disasters in US history. In my opinion, Greenspan is the ultimate ‘Mr. Inflation’. Greenspan almost single-handedly set the world on the high-liquidity, super-inflation path, all the while saying or thinking that the Fed was acting ‘as if’ the dollar was still backed by gold.
“What’s so disgusting is that Greenspan traded all his earlier ideals for power and ego. Greenspan never did anything that required real courage. Greenspan was the total political animal. His legacy will decline as the years go by.

“The saddest thing is that Greenspan leaves poor, humble, honest Fed Chief Bernanke in an untenable situation. In a US so dependent on high inflation and massive liquidity, Bernanke has no choice but to ‘inflate or die’. In a normal situation, the US could take a recession and take the correction. Not now – with the US depending so heavily on inflation and massive liquidity, any substantial contraction in the money supply would bring the US economy to its knees.”