Greenspan the Partisan

Kenneth Thomas of Wharton has published information that he received under the FOIA confirming what we already suspected: close coordination between the White House and Alan Greenspan. Greenspan has taken to visiting the White House so often that they may be considering giving him a permanent parking spot there. This chart from the Washington Post sums it up:

Note that coordination is not necessarily bad — sometimes it makes a lot of sense to coordinate monetary policy with the other things that the government is doing, especially during times of turbulence in the financial markets. But in this case I can’t help but wonder if this indicates an unhealthily close relationship between Greenspan and the Bush White House. There are sound economic reasons for central bank independence from the government, but those concerns seem to have been pushed aside by this particular central banker — particularly worrying since in this case the central bank is coordinating with the worst president ever.

Kash