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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (91501)	10/23/2008 12:36:54 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541582

Were You Wrong, Mr. Greenspan? "Partially." 12:15 PM ET: The maestro has acknowledged that his music was off-key. Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman who led the economy through the years during which excesses in the credit and housing markets were building, is on Capitol Hill right now, reckoning with the events that led the nation into its current perilous shape. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) ticked off a long list of times that Greenspan, who was called the maestro in Bob Woodward’s book on his leadership of the Fed, extolled the ability of markets to properly price and manage risk. “My question for you is simple,” said Waxman, in a hearing of the House Oversight Committee that he chairs. “Were you wrong?” “Well, partially,” said Greenpan, before parsing the distinctions between different types of derivatives that might have been regulated better. Later in the hearing, Greenspan acknowledged that he is being forced by this deep crisis to rethink some of his deepest assumptions and philosophy about how markets work. Here is the entire, remarkable, exchange: Greenspan: Well, remember that what an ideology is. It’s a conceptual framework with the way people deal with reality. Everyone has one. You have to. To exist you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not. And what I’m saying to you is yes, I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact. . . Waxman: You found a flaw in the reality... Greenspan: A flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak. Waxman: In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right, it was not working. Greenspan: Absolutely, precisely. You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well. --Neil Irwin voices.washingtonpost.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (91501)	10/23/2008 2:12:21 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541582

The Argument: Are We, at Heart, a Center-Right Country--or Are We Heading Left Again? It won't surprise you to learn that I think Alter has the better of the argument here. The reason? He focuses on policy whereas Meachem focuses on ideological ID. What makes this kind of analysis both interesting and frustrating is, as always, the comparison with Europe. By those comparisons, the US is definitely center right. But by it's own history, by the role of the government, Alter's got the argument.

To: Lane3 who wrote (91501)	10/23/2008 5:01:25 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541582

But history, as John Adams once said of facts, is a stubborn thing, and it tells us that Democratic presidents from FDR to JFK to LBJ to Carter to Clinton usually wind up moving farther right than they thought they ever would JFK and Clinton? Sure Carter? Maybe LBJ? I have my doubts. FDR? It seems to me that he moved to the left, comparing his campaign statements to his actual record during the 30s. The terms we use in discussing politics and culture can be elusive and elastic. Definitely true, although at times people don't seem to realize it, or ignore the fact. ------ My opinion on the overall issue. - The fact that Obama is likely to win is more about a rejection of Bush, than it is a broad based movement to the left. Of course with the Democrats gaining in both houses (possibly a filibuster proof majority in the senate) and with a new president who not only is a Democrat but isn't a centrist Democrat, the left will gain. This will be exacerbated by the current popular, although false, view that all the problems in banking and finance are because of a lack of regulation. There most likely way to cause serious long term shift left is to create new federal programs, most particularly expanding government involvement in health care. And with solid majorities in both houses and the white house they may be able to do so. But even with the most optimistic scenarios for the Dems gaining seats in congress, and even with some new entitlement or other expansion of government, Dems hoping for a movement (either in terms of durable majorities, or in terms of how much the size of government increased) like the "New Deal majority", will be seriously disappointed. I'm pessimistic about current political trends, and even in a bit longer term I don't expect the gains for the left to just evaporate in 2012, but it isn't going to be a triumphal march to domination by the left.