Universe to Greenspan: Zip It Mister!!

It has been hard to avoid big Al's push back against his critics (here is an example), but my man Willem Buiter is having none of it. He deconstructs Al's self defense on his blog at the FT.

The whole post is well worth reading but I especially agree with his first three points which I reproduce here:

1. The Greenspan Fed (August 1987 - January 2006) did indeed contribute, through excessively lax monetary policy, to the US housing boom that has now turned to bust.
2. The Greenspan-Bernanke put is real. It is an example of an inappropriate monetary policy response to a stock market decline.
3. The Greenspan Fed focused erroneously on core inflation, rather than using all available brain cells to predict underlying headline inflation in the medium term.

Amen brother! You know, from exposure to his academic writings I'd always assumed I wouldn't like Buiter, but he is one righteous dude!