I've Been a Greenspan Skeptic for Some Time

It all began when Alan Greenspan talked about "irrational exuberance", then later climbed on the bandwagon when the dot.com market kept rising. In later years, I heard a staunchly Republican economist of some note talk about Mr. Greenspan pumping the economy in time to avoid an economic downturn for the 2004 election. And this was more than a year before the election.

Yet, when I come across the following excerpt from his memoir, I am not surprised. In fact, it explains perfectly to me why Mr. Greenspan is now heaping praise on Bill Clinton.

Selectively truthful?

Greenspan was intensely criticized for endorsing a large tax cut in 2001 in congressional testimony during the first weeks of the Bush administration. He notes that he was recommending any tax cut, even a smaller one proposed by some Democrats. But he acknowledges that those who had warned him about the perception he was backing Bush's plan were right. "The tax-cut testimony proved to be politically explosive," he writes.

Yet, he adds: "While politics had not been my intent, I'd misjudged the emotions of the moment. . . . Yet I'd have given the same testimony if Al Gore had been president."