Dismal Speculator: Alan Greenspan Says He’d Do It Again

From Alan Greenspan’s testimony about Clinton budget surpluses, the current Bush deficits and the Bush tax cuts yesterday at the Senate Special Committee on Aging:

“I look back and I would say to you, if confronted with the same [economic] evidence we had back then, I would recommend exactly what I recommended then,” Mr. Greenspan said. “It turns out we were all wrong.”

So much for economics as “science” - Alan’s argument is it ‘we read it wrong - and I’d do it the same way again.’ This is economics as ideology, not science.

It’s nice to see Democrats taking Greenspan to task for his support of Bush’s horrendous economics policy. Some samples:

Senator Hillary Clinton

From Yahoo News:

“‘It turns out that we were all wrong,’ Greenspan conceded at a Senate hearing.

‘Just for the record, we were not all wrong, but many people were wrong,’ Clinton, D-N.Y., quickly shot back.”

From the New York Times:

“‘Your testimony helped blow the lid off the lock boxes when it came to the size of the tax cut, the extent of the tax cut,’ Mrs. Clinton said.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada

The Senate Minority Leader from Nevada said of Greenspan, “I voted against him the last two times. I think he’s one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington.”

“Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Greenspan’s congressional testimony on Wednesday [earlier testimony, March 2, 2005] amounted to ’shilling for the president with proposals that would put us deeper in debt.’”

Senator Richard Durbin

The Senate Democratic Whip from Illinois said Greenspan’s endorsement of Bush tax cuts was a “grievous error” that has “driven us into the worst deficit situation we have ever seen in this country.”

It’s not too late for others to recant, repent and join the Democrats above fighting for a sound American economy. It’s never too late to do what’s right.

[Editor Note: There is a nice opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle Bush team theme — ‘We were all wrong’ by Nathaniel Frank - which echoes and extends some of the theme above.]

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