Quote:
Originally Posted by Orruar
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How about instead of trying to argue, you attempt enlightenment instead. Learning new things shouldn't be a struggle. For example, let's say you want to find out whether financial regulation as a whole has increased or decreased over the last X years. How would you determine this? Certainly looking at 1 or 2 laws that were passed and using that as a measure of deregulation is like looking at one person who took snake oil and was cured of syphilis as scientific evidence? So what kind of metrics can we use instead? It's not something that is terribly easy to measure.
I'd probably go with something like the budgets (in inflation adjusted terms) or # of employees for the financial regulatory agencies (SEC mostly, but also FDIC and OCC). Laws are great and all, but they're worthless if nobody is there to enforce them. Of course, they could just be enforcing "don't throw your cigarettes on the sidewalk" rules instead of "don't kill people" rules. So even that kind of measure is imperfect. Can you think of something better?
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How about when the guy who headed the FED explicitly admits financial deregulation occurred under his watch, and that it was a mistake? You tell me to attempt enlightenment and then, because you don't like what Greenspan has to say, tell me he's not a reliable source of perspective?
His statements during congressional testimony did indeed deflect blame onto lenders, but he
did admit fault, and even gave specific ways he fucked up. That's like hearing the bank robber say, "Yea, the bank got robbed, but it wasn't me. But I was there. And I did have a gun. And I did shoot a bitch." and then thinking "Well we can't trust him, he's a criminal. Find out who shot that bitch."
Based on that reasoning, if anything, his role is
worse than he admitted and he was deflecting indictment of the very worst of his culpability. But I don't think that's the case. I think Greenspan has integrity, and I think most of his testimony was correct, and that he does not deserve
all the blame. I think you just don't like what he is saying, and you haven't really given compelling or specific reasons precisely
why you think everything in his testimony was dishonest. And you'll probably just call me stupid for not automatically knowing why you think Greenspan is a lying fiend.
There's really no way it ends well for you. Either:
-Greenspan, one of Ayn Rand's disciples and diehard free market proponent, fucked up so badly with his policies that he has to lie about it during congressional testimony. And if you say he didn't actually fuck up, then he had no reason to lie.
or
-Greenspan explicitly admits deregulation was an error, while deflecting blame.
01-31-2014, 12:14 AM
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