“If you had any doubts that we’re living in a new era,” said The Dallas Morning News in an editorial, Thursday’s congressional grilling of “the once godlike former Federal Reserve chairman” Alan Greenspan should settle them. During his 18 years as chairman, Greenspan was as close as the global economy had to a “Supreme Pontiff.” Now he's admitting that his gospel of unregulated free-market capitalism looks a little tattered.
And for a man “once remarkably hard to decipher,” said Steve Goldstein in MarketWatch, his admission of “shocked disbelief” in the market’s failure was “as clear as an empty Lehman Brothers office.” It just wasn’t “particularly convincing.” His theory was that banks’ self-interest would keep them honest—who’s surprised that their self-interest was in short-term gains?
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