October 31, 2013
I try not to use BTP to carry on personal exchanges, but I can’t resist this one. I see that Nick Gwiazda takes issue with me in the International Business Times arguing that Alan Greenspan does not owe the United States and the world an apology for allowing the housing bubble to grow large enough that its collapse would destroy the economy.
Apparently, Mr. Gwiazda thinks that I am Monday morning quarterbacking on this one. That is 180 degrees at odds with reality. I was warning about the bubble from the summer of 2002 and yelling at the top of my lungs. I was also telling Alan Greenspan what he should do about it. Here’s a brief summary from a few weeks back.
The point here is that Greenspan had no excuse. It was easy to see the bubble for anyone with open eyes and easy to see that its inevitable collapse would be a disaster for the economy.
As an economist I think that we have to reward workers when they do their jobs well and sanction them when they perform poorly. Few workers have ever performed their job more poorly than Alan Greenspan. He indeed owes us a big apology and should stop wasting our time by trying to tell us that the dog ate his homework.
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