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Why does Alan Greenspan's opinion have any weight? He is not in any kind of position to have control over rates.
by lps41 10y ago
Why does Alan Greenspan's opinion have any weight? He is not in any kind of position to have control over rates.
- soperj 10y agoNo, but since he worked in that position for years, he might have some kind of insight?
- talmand 10y agoInsight on how to be incredibly wrong on a housing bubble?
- soperj 10y agoEasy to say in retrospect. Wrong like nearly everyone else.
- erichocean 10y agoOr you could say, nearly everyone else was wrong as a result of him being wrong.
- axlprose 10y agoSaying "nearly everyone" was wrong and blindsided by it is a bit of a stretch. Not everyone that saw it coming profited from it big like the now fabled protagonists in The Big Short. But to people who chose to pay attention to it, the issue was known and well publicized ahead of time: https://youtu.be/tZaHNeNgrcI https://youtu.be/tZaHNeNgrcI https://youtu.be/kFd8YluIVG4 https://youtu.be/kFd8YluIVG4 The key to 'seeing it coming' of course, is to first willingly accept the possibility that something might happen, and then actually look into it. The issue was that many people were just not entertaining the possibility at all, and therefore not bothering to look into it. The information was all there for anybody to see, but this was a case of people missing the gorilla in the room because they were too busy paying attention to the game[0]. [0] http://www.livescience.com/6727-invisible-gorilla-test-shows-notice.html http://www.livescience.com/6727-invisible-gorilla-test-shows...
- EdHominem 10y agoNobody with any experience was surprised by the housing collapse. The only people I know who were surprised (in the financial industry and out) were people who've honestly never considered the numbers for even a minute. Housing prices have to track rent, to some degree, and vice-versa. One of them will change to match the other and wages were not going up... All the ARMs and layers of CDOs are irrelevant. They multiplied the results but didn't change the underlying issue. Leverage doesn't help you when the fulcrum shifts.
- __jal 10y agoHe should know: he's probably the individual with the single largest share of responsibility for the housing crisis. Not to mention responsibility for setting up with swindle that is currently used as an excuse by those who want to feed Social Security to the ibankers.