♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Credit Crisis
at 3/19/2010 03:29:00 PM
Like everyone else, you've probably seen the Financial Times mention former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's lengthiest self-defence yet coming out soon from the Brookings Institution. Download the entire 66-page self-defence as I've now done and let's have a read. It may be of interest to you that it's back to Mr. Greenspan characterizing himself as the president of Greenspan Associates--the consulting firm he headed prior to becoming Fed chief and is now head honcho of again. Here is the Brookings blurb:The Crisis, by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. To prevent a future financial crisis, the primary imperative must be increased regulatory capital and liquidity requirements on banks and significant increases in collateral requirements for globally traded financial products, irrespective of the financial institutions making the trades, Greenspan says. He offers his views about regulatory reform, reflecting on moral hazard and how to address the “too big to fail” problem, which he re-terms “too interconnected to be liquidated quickly.” He knocks the idea of a “systemic regulator,” part of a package of reforms currently being discussed on Capitol Hill, asserting that asset bubbles cannot be prevented and trying to diffuse them would in fact stunt economic growth. “Unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some form of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be infeasible. Assuaging their aftermath seems the best we can hope for. Policies, both private and public, should focus on ameliorating the extent of deprivation and hardship caused by deflationary crises,” he writes.
