Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Alan Greenspan Forecasts Extremely Low Economic Growth for Germany, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Holland and Canada

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, weighed in last week on one of the pressing issues facing the incoming Trump administration and the country — slow economic growth. Greenspan’s explanation is novel and bound to be controversial. To preview: He blames the welfare state and overall uncertainty for the slowdown. … By […]

“The messenger wore a skirt,” says Marna Tucker, “Could Alan Greenspan take that?”*

by run75411 Re-posted from New Agenda April 2009, Bill reminds us of some of the history leading up to today: Editor’s note: We are pleased to present this guest post by Bill H, who’s known around the internet as run75441, and who can usually be found writing in his area of expertise: finance. Recently, Stanford Magazine […]

We Beat the Germans in 1918/And They’ve Hardly Bothered Us Since Then

Brad DeLong culls the comments to this post at Crooked Timber to produce a “with notably rare exceptions” Greatest Hits package—his second post riffing on the original—in honor of The Maestro continuing to attempt to improve the reputations of Paul Volcker and Ben Bernanke, if not G. William (“I ran a company, I didn’t need […]

Only that which is rational is real

CNBC reports Greenspan … added that the financial crisis could not have been foreseen. “It is just not feasible to forecast a financial crisis,” he said. “A financial crisis by definition is a sharp abrupt, unexpected decline in asset prices.” Notice that he says if it is unexpected, then it *can’t* be forecast. That is […]

The Perfect Negative Indicator Weighs In

Alan Greenspan: The U.S. Federal Reserve has done all it can do to reduce unemployment and needs to worry more about the risk of inflation from the stimulus it poured into the economy, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Sunday. But didn’t we just Get All That Money Back? [link added] Greenspan’s reason unemployment […]

Greenspan vs Klein on Democracy Now

Just an FYI related to recent postings here. Democracy Now for 9/24 has about a 38 minute discussion with both Naomie Klien and Alan Greenspan. The remaining minutes is with Jeremy Scahill. This particular exchange caught my attention: AMY GOODMAN: Alan Greenspan, you write in the end of your book, “A Federal Reserve System that […]