The Man Who Spent the Prime of His Life Manipulating the US Capitalist Economy for the Benefit of Banksters Has Written a Book About Capitalism

Alan Greenspan

By Robert Wenzel

The year 2018 may go down as the year of chutzpah.

There is, of course, this year, Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman investigating the murder of Jamal Khashoggi which he ordered, but even more remarkable on the chutzpah scale is Alan Greenspan writing a history of capitalism.

Greenspan spent the prime of his professional career as Federal Reserve chairman manipulating the United States capitalist economy for the benefit of Wall Street banksters.

Specifically, Greenspan headed the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. His gift to the American people during this period? Three recessions. (Technically, Greenspan was out of the Fed when the 2008 recession hit, but make no mistake, it was his mad money printing that created the housing-led 2008 financial crisis that landed like bird shit on the head of  his successor, Ben Bernanke.)

"Greenspan recessions"-shaded gray areas

Click on chart for larger view.

The praise by mainstream establishment media for the new book, Capitalism in America: A History, written by the government-sanctioned destroyer of the value of Federal Reserve notes and co-author Adrian Wooldridge, is even more effusive than it was for the "reforms" MbS was introducing to Saudi Arabia before he had the fingers of a fellow media member cut-off while he was still alive and then had decapitatded using a bone saw.

At least, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman hedged a bit in November 2017 when he wrote breathlessly about MbS:

I never thought I’d live long enough to write this sentence: The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia. Yes, you read that right. Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi style. 

Unlike the other Arab Springs — all of which emerged bottom up and failed miserably, except in Tunisia — this one is led from the top down by the country’s 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and, if it succeeds, it will not only change the character of Saudi Arabia but the tone and tenor of Islam across the globe. Only a fool would predict its success — but only a fool would not root for it.

There is no such hedging when it comes to the praise for the book of the known money and interest rate manipulator.

The Financial Times reports:

This book snaps, crackles and pops with a sustained Economist-quality writing style, mixing a clear set of themes on the evolution of the American project with a full plate of anecdotes, mini-biographies, and pithy quotes from both well-known and obscure sources...

The narrative interplay between business success and failure and the changing forms of government’s response make this a “top-down” history.

Top-down, of course, except for the failure of the book to explain the Fed's role in the distortions to capitalism introduced via booms and busts and periods of accelerated price inflation.

FT informs that Greenspan, OJ Simpson-style, found himself innocent:

What of the great financial crisis? The authors’ account combines the growth of derivatives and securitisation and their interplay with subprime mortgages in an environment of complacency because the financial world had been stable for so long. Greenspan argues against blaming his Fed’s low 2003-05 interest rates for the housing bubble and bust, pointing to a worldwide saving glut that pushed down long-term interest rates. 

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of

EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. 

More about Wenzel here.