On 7th April, Alan Greenspan appeared before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, to explain what happened. He testified that he “was right 70% of the time and wrong 30% of the time.” That’s great. He spends 70% of his day asleep, eating, pooping, and commuting. It’s hard to screw these things up. Which suggests that the screw-uppy 30% was limited to those parts of the day when he was sitting in front of a desk making monetary policy.
10 Replies to “Statistically better than a monkey with a coin”
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We need the decentralization of power (and incompetence imposed). Those who are in a power situation are only making the things worst.
Oooh, that doesn’t look good on you. You know that what you wrote is not fair, and is not what Greenspan meant.
Which is not to say that I’m apologizing for what Greenspan has done. I think there are some fundamentally wrong assumptions underpinning pretty much all of the monetary policy in the US. So, maybe he was “right” and “wrong” within the bubble of those distortions.
But the deeper issue that Raj is concerned with, is that the entire SYSTEM of finance is wrong, the whole ECONOMIC system is a failure of justice. How can you be right doing anything within that framework??
It reminds me a little of the Einstein refrain, that one can’t solve a problem within the same set of assumptions that led to it.
Thanks Raj Patel for prodding the global popular imagination in the direction of truth and justice, a revolution in our ways of thinking and being.
Yes, you are so right Noel. it is a HUGE systemic failure. The Old Paradigm is being exposed at the moment for its total dysfunction which actually is nothing new.
When enough people begin to see and contemplate this, an entirely NEW PARADIGM will arise and I highly suspect that’s what RAJ has in mind.
namaste
Raj, I found this a delightful entry because of the humor in it. As I am sure you know, humor is the lubricant that smooths the unmechanistic mechanism. The grestest humor is the Truth hiding in absurdity. But, one has to forgive and love Alan because he did have the guts to admit he had been wrong all these years. In that case, his ego took a backseat to his AHA. Of course, this can happen to the worst despot on earth and a life-shock where ones assumptions are exposed are often the way this can happen.
namaste
Brian,
When will you tell us that we are not alone in the universe and we can use clean sources of energies to produce food?
Stastically you will be be 100% right!
Merci Brian!
Jerome,
Who is Brian?!?
: )
Noel
(and of course, who is Noel? but that’s another subject.)
Just call me Brian…. (Monty Python)
Search on the blog for ”Just Call Me Brian”
hahaha I’m glad I saw this blog today, because it’s true! simple, to the point and true. his heartless obsessive work eventually penetrated his own ass, the damn dude let us down with this damn economic downfall, probably thinking he created some sort pleasure paradise, but by far the best part are his measly poops and tasteless meals.
LOL! “70% correct” – that’s what Mao Tse Tung said about Stalin….so is Greenspan self-identifying as the Stalin of Capitalism then?