Well Joe Kennedy knew who the assassins were and how they held
power......Ronald Reagan felt the impact of a would be assassins bullet
for daring to challenge this system.
Why was it unthinkable to criticize Greenspan? People afraid ADL will
call them anti-semite>
So wonder why ADL put Christians, Militia and Moslems/Islam on their
hate lists? The literature I have accumulated proves they had one
thing in common, the groups so put on these Hate Hit Lists - they all
had criticized the Federal Reserve System......Usury? What else is the
interest being charged these days on some credit cards?
So now I see why this Anti Defamatoin League exists, an off shoot of
Bnai Brith - a MASONIC Jewish brotherhood....are they the assassins?
Who lie in wait with their faces blackened - who pay for the bullets
delivered by hired killers or the "nuts" that Meyer Lansky said to get
to kill JFK? For the head - they must kill the head?
Psalm 109 and 110 comes to mind here......boy what a group of
assassins.......ADL character assassination and now I know why ADL
warned FBI and BATF and one Judge to stay home that day and they let the
babies die......the innocents died that day.........and look at ADL
taking bribe money from Marc Rich? Jewish Mafia?
saba
April 2, 2001
Once Unthinkable, Criticism Is Raised Against Greenspan
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
� A Gloomy Quarter Ends, and Investors Look Ahead (March 31, 2001)
� Analysts Give Fed Rate Cuts Mixed Review (March 27, 2001)
� Market Place: Stock Investors Fighting the Fed in Second Round
(March 21, 2001)
� Market Place: Awaiting Fed Rescue, Even as Fed Discourages
Dependency (March 15, 2001)
� Join a Discussion on The Economy
� Join a Discussion on Interest Rates, Inflation and the Federal
Reserve
WASHINGTON, April 1 � He raised interest rates too much last year, a
sudden chorus of critics is saying, and he has not cut them enough this
year.
He was just another dot-com sucker, they say, taken in by the "new
economy" claptrap even as the boom in the United States headed
inexorably toward a bust. Like those former stock-option millionaires
who are now back home cadging room and board from Mom and Dad, they
suggest, he could use a dose of humility.
With the decade-old economic expansion in danger, stock prices tumbling
and the Federal Reserve no longer seeming omnipotent or omniscient, Alan
Greenspan, who at 75 is in his 14th year as chairman of the central
bank, is being second- guessed as never before.
Under his leadership, the Fed is "behind the curve," Merrill Lynch
recently told its clients. John H. Makin, an economist at the American
Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization here, called
the Fed's current attitude "disconcertingly complacent." A survey of
business economists found them less comfortable than at any time in
years with the Fed's conduct of monetary policy.
"The financial markets no longer trust him, and millions of Americans
don't, either," the conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly said last
week on the Fox News Channel.
However fair or unfair the criticism � and Mr. Greenspan still has
plenty of admirers and defenders � it gets at a broader question: To
what degree can the country count on the Fed chairman and the central
bank's control over interest rates to avert a recession?
It was perhaps inevitable that he would be cut down a notch during a
period when CNBC is charting the nation's diminished wealth minute by
minute and President Bush is warning of trouble ahead � especially
since Mr. Greenspan's reputation as the infallible ringmaster of the
economy was no doubt overblown when times were good.
"The perception of him has slipped, although I'm not sure it's
warranted," said Robert B. MacIntosh, chief economist at Eaton Vance, a
mutual fund manager. "His job is not to give people 40 percent returns
on their stock holdings. His job is to have the economy grow at a pace
that does not let inflation get out of control."
Mr. Greenspan's job is arguably more complicated than ever before. In an
environment in which technology, financial markets and instant
dissemination of information and analysis are combining to reshape the
economy in ways that no one fully understands, some analysts think the
Fed's ability to smooth out the business cycle may be diminished even if
its monetary policy is flawless.
If, as some economists say, the basic problem
now is that companies overinvested in new equipment and technology,
lower interest rates are not going to do much to get them investing
again, at least not quickly.
Under this view, a combination of business overinvestment, high levels
of consumer debt, the falling stock market and huge trade deficits leave
the nation at risk of a long downturn even if the Fed slashes rates more
aggressively than it already has.
Mr. Greenspan has never rejected such a possibility, and has signaled
that he is aware of the dangers. But he has generally adopted a more
optimistic outlook. And he has said the Fed made the best choices it
could over the last few years with the information it had at the time.
"As I look back at that period, I think that the actions we took were
right at the appropriate times," Mr. Greenspan told the House Financial
Services Committee recently.
Friends and colleagues said he had shown no signs of being bothered by
the criticism. His influence in Washington and other world capitals
remains immense, and he is as much a presence as ever on the social
scene.
His wife, Andrea Mitchell, the NBC News correspondent, threw him a
birthday party earlier this month that was attended by Washington's
A-list, including Vice President Dick Cheney; Colin Powell, the
secretary of state; Paul H. O'Neill, the Treasury secretary; and
Katharine Graham of The Washington Post.
"He will shoulder it as he always has, but maybe with 15 more minutes in
the bathtub every morning," said William Webster, the former F.B.I. and
C.I.A. director, referring to Mr. Greenspan's habit of perusing economic
data while he soaks his bad back each morning.
In some ways, his friends and associates say, he seems relieved at no
longer being held to unrealistic expectations. He was always
uncomfortable, they say, with the notion that he, not advances in
technology, drove up the value of so many 401(k) accounts in recent
years.
The "maestro," as Bob Woodward called the Fed chairman last year in his
book of that name, was rarely shy about using his status to advance his
own views or to make the case for his own legacy. But he also seems to
have known that the day would almost certainly come when he would fail
to live up to his own billing.
After being described at a hearing last year by Senator Phil Gramm of
Texas, a Republican, as a "national phenomenon" and an oracle, Mr.
Greenspan responded that oracles' insights come "from deep depths of
thought which are indescribable, unprovable and rarely correct."
Correct or not, Mr. Greenspan's choices have led economists and
investors to raise questions about three specific periods of Fed policy
making in recent years.
Did the Fed let economic growth, stock market valuations and consumer
debt get out of hand by keeping interest rates too low in 1998 and 1999?
Did the Fed then overreact by tightening too boldly in the first half of
last year?
And has the central bank been too timid in cutting rates this year?
Framing the debate are the broader issues of
whether Mr. Greenspan has been overly optimistic about the economy's
long-term potential and whether he has given sufficient weight to the
possibility that the long run of prosperity would turn out to be nothing
more than the upside of a boom and bust cycle.
"Those who worried about asset price excesses are critical of him," said
Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at Hoenig & Company, an investment
firm. "Those who are full of supply-side zeal and believed that the Dow
could go to 100,000 are giving it to him. And the middle of the roaders
are saying that there never was much inflation, so if there's a
recession it must be because he made a policy mistake."
Continued
1 | 2 | Next>>
Home | Back to Business | Search | HelpBack to Top
� Plan Your Taxes With NYTimes.com
� Get the latest on Mutual Funds
� Looking For New Offices?
NYTimes.com/cityfeet
� Learn more about college sports
Search NYTimes.com Classifieds
Browse the NYT Store
Explore Shopping at NYTimes.com
Click here to order Reprints or Permissions of this Article
Click Here to Receive 50% Off Home Delivery of The New York Times
Newspaper.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/02/business/02ECON.html
