Retiring Too Late

Alan Greenspan's reputation would have been intact if he had had the sense to retire in 1999 or 2000. It was all down hill from there, though. Signing off on the Bush tax cuts to usher in vast deficits, followed by the blunder of ignoring and even promoting the sub-prime debacle ensured that he will go down as a major bumbler. His mistakes grew directly out of his partisanship and his ideology. Convinced of magic self-regulation in free markets, and reluctant to offend the conservative ideologues, he abandoned judgement. His reputation will justly suffer.

He goes about these days emitting smoke in an effort to obscure his culpability, but it won't work.

I think he has another equally bad deed on his record that rarely draws much commentary - his role raising social security taxes to make up for the Reagan tax cuts for the rich.

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