The committee examining the causes of the financial crisis heard a strong defense of the Federal Reserve from its former chairman on Wednesday as the panel began three days of hearings on the failure to rein in Citigroup, Fannie Mae and the subprime mortgage market. In his testimony, an unflinching Alan Greenspan (left), the former fed chief, fended off a barrage of questions about the Fed's failure to crack down on subprime mortgages and other abusive lending practices during his lengthy tenure. He pointed out that the Fed had warned about subprime lending and low-down-payment mortgages in 1999, and again in 2001. And he argued that if the Fed had tried to damp the housing market amid a "fairly broad consensus" about encouraging homeownership, "the Congress would have clamped down on us." He added: "There is a lot of amnesia that's emerging, apparently." Mr. Greenspan's testimony kicked off a long day of hearings for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a bipartisan panel appointed by Congress to examine the mortgage meltdown and banking bailouts. – CNBC
Dominant Social Theme: Much is revealed, much is hidden.
Free-Market Analysis: The analysis of dominant social themes as proposed by the Daily Bell is not necessarily easy. There's a good deal of information on the Internet, and some of it is sincere and credible and some is in a sense "planted" to discredit those who would make use of it. It seems somewhat obvious to us that the rote conflation of space aliens and crop circles, for instance, with Austrian economic theory and central banking analysis is designed to cast doubt on the latter concepts – at least among those who don't believe in domestic space aliens.
This article will examine briefly some of the conflicting information on the 'Net. No conclusions are drawn, but hopefully those who enjoy the Bell will find value in a larger frame of reference that illustrates the problems facing those who attempt to track and analyze elite promotions, especially for investment purposes.
We start with Greenspan and his recent denial of any role in provoking the current financial crisis by keeping interest rates very low for an extended period of time. We are a bit baffled by his denials. This is a man who was a preeminent acolyte of Ayn Rand, and wrote a paper on the value of gold when he was in his mid 20s. He knew then and he knows now that paper money creates difficulties when issued by private/public central banks under the aegis of the state. He understands the business cycle, Austrian economics and how destructive publicly issued fiat money can be. First comes the boom – courtesy of an overprinting of paper money – and then the inevitable bust. It always happens that way as Ludwig von Mises and FA Hayek showed us. Greenspan knows, and must know, for he wrote about it as a youth and supervised the mechanism as a mature economist and regulator.
We suppose he must deny it. One doesn't go to Capitol Hill and admit that one caused the undermining of the wealth of the Western world. And certainly it wasn't Greenspan's fault entirely. He was merely an agent of a destructive system (though admittedly one by choice). His denials are disappointing in the sense that they further muddy the waters. In a better world, Greenspan might have used the "bully pulpit" of these hearings to explain what's really going and how the current mercantilist central banking system really works. (Why would he, one asks, when he has gained so much from it?)
And yet … there are countercurrents. One hears that Greenspan was never a fan of the regime he supervised. In fact, there has always been undercurrent of speculation that Greenspan in a sense pursued the policies he did not just for professional gain but to actually destabilize the regime he evidently disapproved of as a young man. Here is something from The Road to Roota – written by Bix Weir – on this surprising theory:
It was January 2007 when I first discovered the information released by the Federal Reserve Bank, Boston that changed my understanding of the gold & silver markets, the financial markets, the energy markets, the monetary system as well as the true essence of my country, the United States of America. My understanding of the way the world worked was blown to bits and replaced with a more unified theory on all things monetary… all things that lead us down The Road to Roota otherwise known as the Road to the Gold Standard.
The Road to Roota Theory postulates that there is a group of people in the United States as well as around the world that are working to remove and destroy the financial banking powers that have secretly controlled all aspects of our lives for hundreds of years. The original idea of this group sprang from the mind of Alan Greenspan and involved rigging markets with computer programs that he had invented in the 1960's. …
As we read the papers today the events are unfolding before us. The real question now is what will happen in the future? Will we be cast into a deep and dark depression with no hope for future generations or will we survive and even thrive as we make this transition? We are on the cusp of something truly momentous in the history of the human race. With the full transition there is no need to lose the free markets system. Truthfully, a true "Free Market" system has never been given the chance it deserves with all the market rigging of the past 100 years.
Bix Weir provides his bio as follows: "He is a freelance author and analyst dedicated to exposing the long term manipulation of the gold and silver markets. He has worked closely with the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee helping to pull the curtain away from the Cabal of International Bankers that have taken control of our free market system."
Weir seems like a talented writer based on certain reports of his we found on the 'Net. On the other hand, the above perspective could certainly be dismissed as satire perpetrated by a website such as The Onion.
And there is still more. The site refers us to one Benjamin Fulford, a former writer for Forbes. It is Fulford's belief, as expressed in numerous articles, that the world is run by an evil Illuminati and he claims to have settled in Japan after making a pact with certain elements of both Japanese and Chinese society to oppose its plans. Fulford claims that the Illuminati even now is conscious of its defeat and is attempting to negotiate a peaceful retreat – using him as a chief go-between.
What attracted us initially to the Fulford saga was the clever (and tenacious) manner in which he'd managed to make himself the cynosure of humankind's fate – the hinge of a millennial battle between good and evil. (Without Fulford, it would seem, the dialogue between good and evil would collapse.) But the other day we rediscovered a four-part Youtube interview between Fulford and David Rockefeller, and, after watching parts of it again, we're not quite sure what to think. How did Fulford land such an interview? And why is David Rockefeller at age 92 (or thereabouts) granting interviews? (Is it really Rockefeller? Is Fulford really interviewing him?) Some on the 'Net seem to think the interview is sincere. Others, that Fulford is in a sense working with or for Rockefeller and that the interview was cleverly conceived to bolster Fulford's credibility for whatever reason.
More questions: Is Greenspan actually the head of a great conspiracy to destabilize the Anglo-American banking system and usher in a free market? Is Benjamin Fulford a central figure in the destabilization of the Illuminati (which has never been forthrightly established in the modern era)? Are these sites and Youtube postings in some sense hoaxes, bizarre jokes or disinformation designed to discredit those who take them too seriously? Perhaps feedbackers can help.
And still more questions … Is the current system beginning to collapse? Is entropy overtaking a fraudulent economic environment? Are the evident shrieks of economic pain emanating from the European Union, America and elsewhere part and parcel of a plan to continually destabilize Western society in order to create a more global financial and regulatory environment? Certainly, the elite structured a system that must fail over time. It is SUPPOSED to fail in our opinion, so that the pieces can be consistently gathered together and restructured in an ever more centralized fashion. The only questions are when, how – and what takes its place. And, of course, whom to trust.
Some speculate that the EU itself is undertaking the destabilizing of Greece to foment a closer union. What is the evidence for such a charge? Only that Portugal, Italy, Spain, even France (and Britain) are similarly unbalanced without suffering so seriously as Greece. It is as if a sacrificial lamb (to use a Homeric metaphor) has been cast up before the world community in order that – sooner or later – the Eurocrats can make a strong case for a closer political union that will nip further Greek situations in the bud.
The above ideas are only speculations but in today's feverish environment almost any speculation may be accepted as having a grain of truth, whether it does or not. What can be said is that there are growing complexities involved with analyzing dominant social themes. In fact, analyzing elite promotions in the early 21st century is increasingly complicated and probably won't get any easier. There are many factors to consider and one needs to follow numerous story lines closely to winnow the truthful ones. If one can.
