What did the White House know?
Amy Gluckman, an editor of Dollars and Sense, reported in the
November/December 2006 issue: “During the Clinton administration,
Greenspan
was relatively ‘unembedded’-averaging only one meeting per month at
the
White House..
“But when George W. Bush moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. ,
Greenspan’s
behavior changed. During 2001, he averaged 3.3 White House visits a
month,
more than triple his rate under Clinton and much more often with high-
level
officials like Vice President Cheney. His visits rose to 4.6 a month
in 2002
and 5.7 in 2003.
“Whatever White House officials were whispering in Greenspan’s ear, it
worked: Greenspan abruptly changed his tune on tax cuts, lending
critical
support to Bush’s massive 2001 and 2003 tax giveaways, and he loosened
the
reins by cutting Fed-controlled interest rates repeatedly beginning in
January 2001, a gift to the Republicans in power.”
Along the way, the bubble caused housing prices to inflate
drastically,
which officialdom touted as economic “growth.” Even today, periodicals
like
Barron’s naively boast that this inflation boosted American’s
“wealth.”
But this source of liquidity for everyday people has been maxed out,
like
our credit cards, and there is nothing to replace it. There is no cash
cushion anymore, because years ago people stopped earning enough money
for
personal or household savings.
As purchasers lose their homes to foreclosure, the real estate is
being
grabbed at bankruptcy prices by the banks and by any other investors
with
ready money. Whole neighborhoods of cities like Cleveland or Atlanta
are
turning into boarded-up ghost towns.
What we are seeing are the results of an economic crime on a fantastic
scale
that implicates the highest levels of our financial and governmental
establishments. It spanned three presidential administrations-Bush I,
Clinton, and Bush II-though the worst of it came with the surge of
outright
lending fraud after 2001.
As usual when hypocrisy is rampant only the small fry are being called
to
account. Commentators, including a sleepwalking Congress, have
self-righteously railed at consumers who got in over their heads. The
Mortgage Bankers Association is even lobbying Congress to allocate $7
million more to the FBI to go after the supposedly rogue brokers
within
their own industry who are being scapegoated.
Tags: bubble, FED, financier, gov, government, housing, NWO, sub-prime, US
