🚀 go-pugleaf

Larynx wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 21:03:35 GMT, Me <srhi@home.com> opined:
>
> >Alan Greenspan has not ruined our economy. Greedy investors looking for a
> >quick buck and greedy companies looking to satisfy investors are what's
> >causing the problem. Besides, ups and downs in the economy are quite normal.
>
> No, that's what started it all.  Business investment was through the
> roof (because of the stock market), causing the economy to overheat.
> Inflation was a very real danger (if inflation was really, really bad,
> like Brazil currently is, prices at the end of the day would be a lot
> higher than at the beginning of the day).  To fight against inflation,
> Greenspan burst the "tech bubble" by raising interest rates, only he
> over corrected, and was too slow to start lowering rates again,
> resulting in a recession that really shouldn't have occured.
>
> Larynx
>
>

Ups and downs in the economy ARE normal, and these normal ups and downs DID start
it all.  The boom and bust cycles in the late 1800s and the turn of the century
finally got enough politicians to decide that the government could handle the
economy better, and they created the Federal Reserve system in 1913.
  Of course, the unnatural boom of the 20s and the Great Depression of the 1930s
were not perceived as having ANYTHING TO DO with their wonderful Federal Reserve
system--"it was obviously market failure"--and so we're stuck with individual
people having too much power over our economy.
  Not that I think Greenspan is doing a bad job, he's doing a rather good job of
it.  It's just that it shouldn't be anybody's job to control the economy like
that.



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