The Greenspan Legacy

The greatest country of the age now past, the United States, was bankrupt as we entered the new millennium. It is not surprising that Greenspan finally folded under the pressure. He was between a rock and an impossible place.

The Greenspan era may be the story of Job all over again. Unlimited escalation applied to defeat defiant integrity. This time it took the collapse of the entire free world to get Job to throw in his cards.

I was initially saddened and disappointed to see Mr. Greenspan (my hero) at the head of the boardroom table as our world-shaking Wall Street mega tragedy came to light. I had no appreciation of the magnitude of the disparate forces aligned against him. Today, we all know more about what was happening back then and it is evident that the urgency of the problem is still escalating with every passing day. A geometric progression rising toward the vertical.

I thank Mr. Greenspan for responsibly guiding the ship for as long as he could. I forgive him for what has transpired since, even though I realize that he should have stepped away much earlier when it became clear that he was powerless to even impede the groundswell of criminality that has now engulfed us.

And what of the future in a world gone completely mad? There is an old axiom in physics: “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”.