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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Box-By-The-Riviera™ who wrote (251103)	7/18/2003 7:02:41 PM
From: patron_anejo_por_favor	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 436258

Nice riff from the Mogambo Guru today (from DailyReckoning.com): Greenspan spent last Tuesday testifying in front of the House, and of course he was all upbeat about how his sharp eyes can detect all these wonderful signs that some golden era of prosperity and productivity-produced paradise is imminent. He has been saying these things for three years, and for three years the ugliness of reality has proved him to be a clueless liar. Tuesday was no different. The funniest thing for me was when he responded to the question whether or not manufacturing is important. He responded that markets make value, and it is inconsequential whether an economy makes tangible things out of raw materials or the economy makes services that people want to buy. True enough, I guess. The only rub is that we cannot export government regulations and personal services, and we will always import oil and widgets. In the final analysis, Greenspan has no idea how economies actually work. The best part was when Bernard Sanders, one of the few Independent Party members of Congress, accused Greenspan as being completely out of touch with the economy. In fact, he got positively angry about the egregious performance of the Fed chairman. He also wanted Greenspan to comment on the fact that the people who save money, and are dependent on the interest that those savings generate, are getting hammered, thanks to the damn Fed having to resort to extreme measures to try and desperately correct the egregious mistakes he has been making and making and making. Greenspan's reply was pure business as usual: the elderly and the poor ought to be grateful that businesses can borrow cheaply! So, in short, the elderly and the poor are a bunch of whining crybabies, and they should be happy- happy I tells ya! -to sacrifice their lives so that interest rates can be held low so that CEO's can continue making the big bucks, and people can buy big houses that they cannot afford, and that people can extract more and more equity from their appreciated houses with which to spend. At the end of the day, he seems to say, the low interest rates that preclude the elderly from affording to buy things IS allowing other people to go farther into debt so that THEY can buy things.