We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
This seems a bit pointless This headline caught my eye:
Alan Greenspan to Testify on Subprime Lending, Securitization, and GSEs, Wednesday, April 7
Shame he was not grilled a bit more about the Fed’s free-money policy that fuelled much of the credit crisis back in the days leading up to the housing bubble. Goodness knows what his old mentor would have made of this charade.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Paul says that his old mentor threw a dinner plate in his face, but as we all know Paul doesn’t do links…
One of the things A G mentioned in some prior appearance before those most august and well-informed inquistors was his “surprise” that the self-interest of the management structures in the financial sector had not kicked in to cause them to ascertain how accurate their working information was, its sources and possible deficiencies, etc.
Now, of course he did not go into all that detail, but, he had expected better of managements who would
“protect” themselves.
But then, look at Wachovia – actually “too big to manage.” No segment was material enough to justify close surveilance. In fact segments of segments were ignored. The pattern was repeated elsewhere.
Something happens to the lads on their “way up.” They come to believe in their own cleverness.
So says an old, retired, independent outside General Counsel of some of those kinds of creatures.
It seems that Greenspan is laying most of the blame on Congress. That’s fair; they deserve a lot of it. But Greenspan’s hands aren’t clean, either.
Maybe the old mentor’s ghost can recruit some farmboy to turn Greenspan from the Dark Side.
Quite true Alisa – Paul does not do links.
However, what would I link to? I do not get most information from the internet (and I did not get this from the internet).
The break (many decades ago) between Greenspan and Rand is well documented – it is in the biographies and so on.
Alan Greenspan is a free market man in the same way that I am 6’2 and have a full head of hair.
But the fact that Greenspan is a serial money supply increaser (bailing out bubble after bubble – and THEREFORE MAKING THE NEXT BUBBLE WORSE AND WORSE) does not stop the “mainstream” media presenting him as a free market man – because (shock, horror) the msm are liars.
The tactic is always the same, “even” Alan Greenspan now admits that “the market” (by which is meant the voluntary interaction of human beings) is not “self correcting” and that it needs (yet more) regulation (on top of the thousands of pages that already exist) in order to prevent speculative bubbles.
All nicely drawing attention away from the support the Federal Reseve system in general (and Alan Greenspan in particular) gave to bank and other credit money expansion. Preventing a clear out (the liquidation of the malinvestments) every time it looked like the All Fools Festival was finanally comming to an end – and by so preventing a slump, making the eventual bust bigger and bigger – by the way the Fed and so on (the other Central governments, and national governments – such as the Irish national government which has an insane obsession with keeping Anglo Irish bank out of the bankruptacy courts and has put a sizeable part of the entire Irish economy down the banking “black hole” of malinvestments over the last year or so) ARE STILL DOING THIS.
“You free market people did not speak against monetary expansion at the time”.
I (along with MANY other people) did so.
In fact I made it a point (over several years) to never let a week go by without putting out a warning – in writing (in a comment on a post or whatever) on the wonderful internet.
My stuff is right here – on this blog. Not just about the United States – but about Britain and the E.U. as well (oh yes there is a credit money expansion malinvestment problem in the Euro zone also – and it is not just in Ireland).
And such blogs as the Ludwig Von Mises blog were full of the same sort of work by other people.
We denounced Alan Greenspan and so on AGAIN AND AGAIN (week after week, month after month, year after year).
So if anyone implies that Alan Greenspan is a fee market person or that we supported him – then that msm person (or whoever it is) is a liar.
Not to appear “for the Defense,” but really, is there not a great difference in making credit readily available and controlling how that credit is used?
RRS, I would suggest that neither function should be in the state’s remit. In that situation, any constraint on how credit is used would properly be the at discretion of the provider, and the borrower would be free to look elsewhere if he disliked that limitation.
Greenspan is Robert Stadler from Atlas Shrugged, the man who betrayed his principles and led to his own destruction. It would be better if he’d had to testify before the Ayn Rand Institute or Mises Institute than some government committee.
RRS – in theory yes.
However, in practice the one leads to other.
If the government provides money (via the Central Bank) so Lib Dem (and other) demands for how the money is used come.