"This is the most facile portrait of what caused this crisis" ...and other thoughts on the inauguration of Barack Obama

Alan Greenspan is responsible for this crisis. He will be remembered for his tragic combination of ideological stubbornness and hubris. These were compounded by his age. Old age triggered a calcification in his thinking and myopia in his vision which rendered him out of touch and imperceptive to paradigmatic shifts in the world economy. In short, he was a victim of his own success and ego.

While the Federal Reserve's Fed Funds Target Rate played a large role in fomenting this crisis, it is not the whole story. The impact of China's rise, as transmitted through both the Wal-Mart effect on inflation and by China's massive interventions in the currency market, kept interest rate on long term U.S. government debt supernaturally low. This caused the stewards of our economy to fall asleep at their posts and the citizens of our country to become complacent.

Money was made too easy. She slept around, inflating the egos of people and the asset prices of things. Inevitably, we all got the clap.

Equally important is the human story. We, as humans, have a instinctive desire to avoid pain which has been encrypted and inculcated in us over the immense epoch of our genetic history. Often we construe falsehood with pain, when really we should embrace the opposite.

We see ourselves as rational creatures, and avoiding pain appears eminently rational. But this is fallacious. Avoiding pain is actually an emotional decision. Enduring pain in the pursuit of truth and some teleological utopos is truly rational. The ability to endure pain is characteristic of that higher order of thinking which separates us from all other creatures who possess no filter on their actions. Creatures who move before thought stalls in their brain with impulse as quick as synaptic transmission.

We, as a culture, failed in our fiduciary responsibility to ourselves. We allowed ourselves to be deluded. We delayed the tough decisions. We lived like children.

Alan Greenspan failed in his fiduciary responsibility to our nation. He let his desire to be liked, cherished and remembered overwhelm his thinking. This was not a conscious, pseudo-rational decision... its was an emotional one. But nothing is more insidious than the desire for popularity, as it corrupts truth, and posits the ends for the means.

The economy hasn't gotten laid in a long while, and he is frustrated. He lost his game when he slept with some hussy and got the clap. It is time for him to take his medicine.