The Worst Ex-Central Banker in the World

Paul Krugman:

The Worst Ex-Central Banker in the World: Steven Pearlstein reads Alan Greenspan’s new book, and discovers that Greenspan believes that he bears no responsibility for all the bad things that happened on his watch — and that the solution to financial crises is, you guessed it, less government.

What Pearlstein doesn’t mention, but I think is important, is Greenspan’s amazing track record since leaving office — a record of being wrong about everything, and learning nothing therefrom. It is, in particular, more than three years since he warned that we were going to become Greece any day now, and declared the failure of inflation and soaring rates to have arrived already “regrettable.”

The thing is, Greenspan isn’t just being a bad economist here, he’s being a bad person, refusing to accept responsibility for his errors in and out of office. And he’s still out there, doing his best to make the world a worse place.

Also, see this from Brad DeLong.