Federal "legislating" of the economy

[kiryan]

Its hard to stomach this coming from Greenspan who thought in like 2006 the housing market was "a little frothy", but basically I agree with his analysis. Government has stunted the recovery.

Greenspan, speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations Tuesday, argues that companies sitting on stockpiles of cash are unwilling to make long-term capital investments because of increased government regulation and hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus spending that have "crowded out" private investment opportunities. It's a situation he says closely models the trends during the Great Depression

...

Greenspan's comments replicated the observations he made in a recent commentary for the journal "International Finance." He asserts that over past two years, lawmakers in Washington have been too keen-or active--in trying to legislate the economy.

...

"If you have to invest over a very long period of time--assets which are irredeemable, which means you have to make a very critical choice-- you have to have some confidence, in part, at least, that you will know what the structure will look like." Greenspan said Tuesday. He pointed to utility companies that are reluctant to spend money on major infrastructure projects when they can't project with certainty their carbon costs.

== candidate obama said something to the effect of we won't outlaw new coal plants, but if you build one you'll go bankrupt.

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/ ... latestnews

I'd also like to throw in somethign from Rush. After Obama's electinon, Rush said something to the effect of Obama will use this crisis to push every liberal social program he can with massive spending. He won't be able to stop the recovery, but he will slow it down.

[Corth]

The funny thing about Greenspan... Everything he has said before and after his tenure as Chairman of the Federal Reserve has made perfect sense. While everything he said and did as Chairman stoked the credit binge that resulted in a crisis - conveniently within months after he left office. This is the guy who circa 2005 advocated 'affordability products' such as adjustable rate and interest only loans - during one of the lowest interest rate environments on record. He orchastrated the Long Term Capital Management bailout. the so-called 'Greenspan Put' was named after him. Moral hazard anyone? And now he points out that government intervention is creating an instable investment environment for the private sector. No shit, huh? Before he became Chairman he advocated a return to real money - the gold standard. And then he spent over a decade managing the fiat economy. As far as I'm concerned Osama Bin Laden has more credibility than Greenspan. At least with Osama you know exactly what his position is on the matter.