Tom Lutzenberger

Looking for a Cause for Thursday's Sell-off? Blame Greenspan

I think the big boogy monster in all of this is that the general population is quite willing to enjoy the antics of investing and institutional investors when everybody is making money, but when the house of cards falls down, as it does every cycle, then everybody looks for a scapegoat. Greenspan did rights and wrongs like anybody else in a leadership position, and he had the uncanny ability to take tomes of government data and crunch them down to their essential meaning. His style of speaking "nothing" or fedspeak was simply being cognizant to the fact that institutional investors were so wired after the great fall in 1989 to jitter on anything, that he would not let himself be the cause of avoidable panics. Sounds pretty downright smart to me.

And who was he to be able to stop a free market from bubbling? All he controlled was the rate at which currency exchanged between banks. It was the banks, the lenders, the borrowers and the investors that ginned this whole house of cards up to where it got to. And while we all made money we all were in agreement. Good job, keep doing whatever you're doing. Bravo.

Until it crashes. Then we need a scapegoat.