My disdain for our former Fed Chair grows daily..
Found this interesting post this morning.
By Mark Mitchell, Published: February 21st, 2009 9:44 PM EST
Charles Gasparino, the CNBC reporter, published an op-ed in The New York Post yesterday.
Here’s a part of what he had to say:
Earlier this year, high-flying hedge fund Paulson & Co. retained [former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan] for its “advisory board.” The firm is a noted “short seller” of banks and financial stocks – meaning it makes money when these companies’ shares fall.
The thing is, Greenspan is making public comments that inevitably influence public policy and the markets – and some of those comments may well have led to his clients making a nice profit.
In a recent speech to the Economic Club of New York, Greenspan said the recession would likely “be the longest and deepest” since the Great Depression and that Congress might have to allocate more money to save the beleaguered banking system on top of the billions already gone for the Troubled Asset Recovery Program.
Then he told the Financial Times: “It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring” of their troubled balance sheets.
Such a move would wipe out stockholders, sending shares of banks even lower – thus likely benefiting Paulson. It would also protect bondholders, helping another Greenspan client, the large bond-firm Pimco.
The question is: Why didn’t Gasparino, or anybody else, say this on CNBC?
Hedge fund manager Paul Kedrosky appeared on the network to criticize Greenspan’s relationship with Pimco, but there was no mention of the former Fed chairman spewing negativity for Paulson’s short selling operation.
More importantly, no proper journalist at CNBC has reported that short sellers use many other tactics (such as planting false stories on CNBC and manufacturing phantom stock) to demolish public companies and crush the markets.
At our nation’s leading business network, only Jim Cramer reports on this scandal. Only Jim Cramer tells America about one of the most important causes of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.
He does so with funny sound effects while prancing around the Romper Room set of a program that is called “Mad Money.”
These days are surreal, to say the least.
Now, I’m all for free speech like the next guy. I am also for full disclosure. If Greenspan is going to give a speech on the economy, he must be required to tell us the negativity he is espousing directly benefits his clients.
He already did the historical revisionist thing last year when his book came out. He attempted to put a nice face on the mess he left Ben Bernanke with. Folks did not buy it.
Now Greenspan, “the advisor” is giving speeches as the “former Chairman of the Fed” and the opinions he is giving just happen to parrot those of his clients.
Can anyone get him to be the least bit honest….anyone??
Disclosure (“none” means no position):
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