Clad in his customary crisp dark suit, Greenspan appeared comfortable — leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs.
No longer constrained, Greenspan shares a piece of his mind – USATODAY.com
Well the green giant has been retired for almost a year and the green-back has not collapsed………… yet.
Unfortunately, Greenspan’s spectacular success at maintaining stability, may have been bad for the economy in the long run. Stability encourages investors to take on greater risk so that when a downturn happens it will be even more painful than it would have been otherwise. But this post is not about the Greenspan legacy. I think he will still be a hero twenty years from now and the Crash of ‘09 will be blamed on the Bernanke blunders.
What I find so interesting is how little power the most powerful man in the world had. Before retirement, Greenspan had the ability to turn the economies of the world around on a phrase or even a word. Because of this power he had to be very careful every time he spoke. There has never been anyone in modern history with so many people hanging on his every word. But even with all that power, he was not able to moderate out of control government spending, change immigration policy, or directly affect the decisions of any government for that matter.
With great power comes great responsibility, and Greenspan handled that well. For that, he is one of my role models. His successor on the other hand……. well I am going to have to find a different role model on training successors. I am just glad that he did not increase the power of his office. That has been one of the biggest mistakes that men of great power have made throughout history. They would continue to take on new “responsibilities” and then when they went to pass the torch (whether voluntarily or not) there was no one else who could handle that much power.
It will be interesting to see if Bernanke can pull off a “soft landing.” He should be able to this time. The stakes are not high enough yet, but wait till you see web bubble 3! Talk about a test of power.
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Luke Gedeon