Greenspan

What You Weren't Told About the Financial Crisis - The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

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By Numerian


The best the Commission can do is say “Alan Greenspan should have done this, and he shouldn’t have done that.” It cannot say that there is something deeply corrupting in the way politicians of both parties think and act in Washington.

Greenspan Calls Fraud

"There are two fundamental reforms we need - to get adequate capital and, two, to get far higher levels of enforcements of statutes of fraud statutes, existing ones. I'm not even talking about new ones. Things were being done which were certainly illegal and fairly criminal in certain cases. Fraud, fraud is a fact. Fraud creates very considerable instability in competitive markets. If you cannot trust your counterparties, it won't work. And indeed, we saw that it didn't." Alan Greenspan Nov. 9, 2010

Via Karl Denninger Alan Greenspan: The Banks Robbed You

As many of us are saying... (e.g. Social Security)

More after the break.

ECONned: Yves Smith's Book of Books

Review of ECONned, by Yves Smith

Out the gate, I was fully prepared to dislike this book (ECONNED: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism). While I occasionally peruse Ms. Smith’s excellent econ/finance site, Naked Capitalism, I have often considered some of her comments to be soft pedaling the economic crises of our times.

But, I have to admit her attitudes have been evolving to my way of thinking, and her masterful book is a stunner and a real joy to behold!

Madam Smith’s treatment of the Brooksley Born saga is the best I’ve read yet, and I humbly believe I have read them all. Ms. Born, a top notch derivatives attorney from the Washington, D.C. powerhouse law firm of Arnold Porter, was appointed to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Clinton Administration.

How Ms. Born was halted from performing her rightful function in that position by the likes of Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan and Arthur Levitt (the true villains and criminals, and make no mistake about that) is well worth the price of the book (and at $30 a pop, it ain’t cheap in these times we economically struggle to survive in).

And the recent mea culpa by Levitt in ignoring and circumventing Brooksley Born’s warnings of the coming debacle, is akin to the bank robber who murders a teller during his crime remonstrating that he had a bad day!