Alan Greenspan, no longer sleeping well and realizing he will forever be blamed for this housing bubble and crash, tries to spin away the blame

Surprising piece in the FT today from Greenspan, where he seeks to refute a critic who blamed him for the housing bubble.

"Housing bubble? Nah, had nothing to do with it" Greenspan essentially retorts.

Well, let's make HP the judge and jury today in regards to Mr. Greenspan and his housing bubble. Here's my list of charges, please add to it:

1) Dropped interest rates too low in a panic

2) Kept interest rates too low for too long

3) Failed to regulate the out of control mortgage lending industry he was supposed to regulate

4) Didn't speak out against the bubble ('oh, a wee bit of froth' cutesy cutesy is not speaking out)

5) Falsely said the Fed could and should do nothing to deflate bubbles

6) Stupidly steered people away from fixed-rate mortgages and into risky ARMs at exactly the wrong time (before he began raising rates), while encouaging the out of control REIC to get even more creative and even more stupid with exotic lending

7) Didn't warn Americans that they could be financially destroyed if they bought a home at a price that was not justified by the fundamentals

Here's Greenspan, approaching his likely date with the gates of hell, futily trying to salvage his destroyed reputation. Too long to print here, but read the whole thing. I did like this one sentence (but Angelo Mozilo won't) - too bad HP'ers knew what was going on and Greenspan didn't. Amazing.

"Could tightened regulation of subprimes have contained some of the reprehensible, and presumably criminal, acts of lenders? Probably. But the broader crisis would likely have arisen even with increased micro-surveillance."

The Fed's William Poole correctly says the mortgage lenders and homebuilders going out of business were "bad actors" whose punishment was deserved

Damn, this is getting interesting... So interesting that if you work for an Alt-A "Liar's Loan" lender, or a homebuilder targeting people with low incomes and bad credit, and you haven't been laid off yet, you might want to start packing up Monday, and take the plants home now... Doesn't sound like the Fed is gonna be bailing you out...

"This year’s markets punished mostly bad actors and/or poor lending practices. The market’s punishment of unsound financial arrangements has been swift, harsh and without prejudice”

-William Poole, President Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, July 2007