MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2008 Barron's FEATURES MAIN Looking at Greenspan's Long-Lost Thesis By JIM MCTAGUE | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR Barron's gets a rare glimpse at the Maestro's long-lost NYU doctoral thesis, and his long-ago view of, yes, a housing debacle. WE'VE FOUND IT -- A COPY OF ALAN Greenspan's long-lost Ph.D. thesis! Or, more accurately, a rare copy of the elusive document, in Lassie-Come-Home-fashion, found us. The dissertation, written in 1977 when Greenspan received his coveted degree from New York University, had been tucked away on a professor's sagging bookshelf for 31 years. "There is no perpetual motion machine which generates an ever-rising path for the prices of homes," wrote Greenspan in his dissertation. There are only two known copies: the Maestro's own and the one we viewed. As far as we can tell, Barron's is the only news organization ever to have seen the thesis since a third and now missing copy was removed from the public shelves of NYU's Bobst library at Greenspan's request in 1987, the year that Ronald Reagan appointed him chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Glancing at the document, we momentarily felt like Indiana Jones at the dramatic moment in which he discovers the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Greenspan purportedly was trying to deter news coverage of his personal life when he ordered the thesis into hiding. His anti-paparazzi subterfuge backfired: The stealth thesis became red meat for his critics, who smelled a cover-up. Magazine articles and a new book, Deception and Abuse at the Fed (reviewed here on March 31), have suggested that his degree was largely honorary and that the thesis was a cut-and-paste job, comprised of previously published, non-academic articles wrapped in a flimsy introduction. Home > News & Commentary > This Week's Magazine > Features MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2008 FEATURES MAIN Looking at Greenspan's Long-Lost Thesis By JIM MCTAGUE | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR Barron's gets a rare glimpse at the Maestro's long-lost NYU doctoral thesis, and his long-ago view of, yes, a housing debacle. TEXT SIZE PRINT EMAIL DIGG SINGLE PAGE REPRINTS GET RSS Subscribe Now With these readers: Or copy the rss link: WE'VE FOUND IT -- A COPY OF ALAN Greenspan's long-lost Ph.D. thesis! Or, more accurately, a rare copy of the elusive document, in Lassie-Come-Home-fashion, found us. The dissertation, written in 1977 when Greenspan received his coveted degree from New York University, had been tucked away on a professor's sagging bookshelf for 31 years. "There is no perpetual motion machine which generates an ever-rising path for the prices of homes," wrote Greenspan in his dissertation. There are only two known copies: the Maestro's own and the one we viewed. As far as we can tell, Barron's is the only news organization ever to have seen the thesis since a third and now missing copy was removed from the public shelves of NYU's Bobst library at Greenspan's request in 1987, the year that Ronald Reagan appointed him chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Glancing at the document, we momentarily felt like Indiana Jones at the dramatic moment in which he discovers the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Greenspan purportedly was trying to deter news coverage of his personal life when he ordered the thesis into hiding. His anti-paparazzi subterfuge backfired: The stealth thesis became red meat for his critics, who smelled a cover-up. Magazine articles and a new book, Deception and Abuse at the Fed (reviewed here on March 31), have suggested that his degree was largely honorary and that the thesis was a cut-and-paste job, comprised of previously published, non-academic articles wrapped in a flimsy introduction. TWO MAGAZINE ARTICLES IN THE late 1990s suggested that the thesis was entirely the work of Greenspan's staff at the Council of Economic Advisers, which he chaired from 1974-1977. -skip- We were tickled to find that the work's introduction includes a discussion of soaring housing prices and their effect on consumer spending; it even anticipates a bursting housing bubble. Writes Greenspan: "There is no perpetual motion machine which generates an ever-rising path for the prices of homes." Greenspan, however, didn't foresee a housing mania spilling into the general economy, toppling banks and brokerage houses and paralyzing key portions of the credit system. The worst he could anticipate was that a sharp "break in prices of existing homes would pull down the prices of new homes to the level of construction costs or below, inducing a sharp contraction in building." Back then, there were no home-equity lines of credit, derivatives or subprime mortgages. Mortgages were largely concentrated at savings and loans. Credit was harder to come by, too, because conventional mortgage rates were about 8.5% and headed significantly higher. Still, the thesis shows that the former Fed boss was focused on housing very early in his career. Thus, it casts doubt on his recent assertions about being surprised by the Mesozoic-era-size impact of this decade's housing mania.
Looking at Greenspan's Long-Lost Thesis By JIM MCTAGUE | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR
Barron's gets a rare glimpse at the Maestro's long-lost NYU doctoral thesis, and his long-ago view of, yes, a housing debacle.
WE'VE FOUND IT -- A COPY OF ALAN Greenspan's long-lost Ph.D. thesis! Or, more accurately, a rare copy of the elusive document, in Lassie-Come-Home-fashion, found us.
The dissertation, written in 1977 when Greenspan received his coveted degree from New York University, had been tucked away on a professor's sagging bookshelf for 31 years.
"There is no perpetual motion machine which generates an ever-rising path for the prices of homes," wrote Greenspan in his dissertation.
There are only two known copies: the Maestro's own and the one we viewed. As far as we can tell, Barron's is the only news organization ever to have seen the thesis since a third and now missing copy was removed from the public shelves of NYU's Bobst library at Greenspan's request in 1987, the year that Ronald Reagan appointed him chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Glancing at the document, we momentarily felt like Indiana Jones at the dramatic moment in which he discovers the Lost Ark of the Covenant.
Greenspan purportedly was trying to deter news coverage of his personal life when he ordered the thesis into hiding. His anti-paparazzi subterfuge backfired: The stealth thesis became red meat for his critics, who smelled a cover-up. Magazine articles and a new book, Deception and Abuse at the Fed (reviewed here on March 31), have suggested that his degree was largely honorary and that the thesis was a cut-and-paste job, comprised of previously published, non-academic articles wrapped in a flimsy introduction.
Home > News & Commentary > This Week's Magazine > Features MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2008 FEATURES MAIN
TEXT SIZE PRINT EMAIL DIGG SINGLE PAGE REPRINTS GET RSS Subscribe Now With these readers:
Or copy the rss link:
"There is no perpetual motion machine which generates an ever-rising path for the prices of homes," wrote Greenspan in his dissertation. There are only two known copies: the Maestro's own and the one we viewed. As far as we can tell, Barron's is the only news organization ever to have seen the thesis since a third and now missing copy was removed from the public shelves of NYU's Bobst library at Greenspan's request in 1987, the year that Ronald Reagan appointed him chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Glancing at the document, we momentarily felt like Indiana Jones at the dramatic moment in which he discovers the Lost Ark of the Covenant.
TWO MAGAZINE ARTICLES IN THE late 1990s suggested that the thesis was entirely the work of Greenspan's staff at the Council of Economic Advisers, which he chaired from 1974-1977.
-skip-
We were tickled to find that the work's introduction includes a discussion of soaring housing prices and their effect on consumer spending; it even anticipates a bursting housing bubble. Writes Greenspan: "There is no perpetual motion machine which generates an ever-rising path for the prices of homes."
Greenspan, however, didn't foresee a housing mania spilling into the general economy, toppling banks and brokerage houses and paralyzing key portions of the credit system. The worst he could anticipate was that a sharp "break in prices of existing homes would pull down the prices of new homes to the level of construction costs or below, inducing a sharp contraction in building." Back then, there were no home-equity lines of credit, derivatives or subprime mortgages. Mortgages were largely concentrated at savings and loans. Credit was harder to come by, too, because conventional mortgage rates were about 8.5% and headed significantly higher. Still, the thesis shows that the former Fed boss was focused on housing very early in his career. Thus, it casts doubt on his recent assertions about being surprised by the Mesozoic-era-size impact of this decade's housing mania.
I'm thinking mandatory retirement for Fed chairmen?
And, please, take Andrea Mitchell with you, Bubbles. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
That is an extremely charitable interpretation which buys Greenspan's explanation of why his thesis should be removed from public view. Beyond the embarrassment of the fact that an academic credential was issued for what was, at best, little more than honorary reasons, his thesis clearly shows that he understood real estate bubbles. That would tend to show his professed inability to spot bubbles until they burst for the self-serving crap that it is. He is not one of the elite economists of this country or any other. He is one of the premier PR agents fronting for the gang who have been looting the country's wealth for 30 years. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
I haven't read his dissertation. Don't need to. He could've rewritten The General Theory, and he'd still be an idiot. Generally speaking, the moment you hear that someone was buddy-buddy with the libertarian movement's chief fascist skank great literary icon, Ayn Rand, you can assume the person hasn't got a clue about economics. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
I think that part of the problem with Obama is that he remains too high minded. Our opponents do not hesitate to throw dirt in the public's eye or our eyes, nor to grab a rock or a broken bottle and use them while those eyes are blinded. The intended audience, for better or worse, expects this and a refusal to employ such tactics in return results in being characterized as an "efite intellectual."
Any true thing that brings Greenspan and the beneficiaries of his actions low and results in his actions being seen for what they are is,IMHO, all to the good. But just getting 60 votes in the Democratic Senate Caucus and a Democrat in the White House will not be enough. Even should that happen, they will have to be convinced to redeem their souls and reform campaign finance in such a way that they are beholden to the voters, not to wealthy donors. Else there victory will only be a brief respite in the ongoing dissolution of the Constitution and popularly elected representative government.
Equally important is the discrediting of the motives and the ideology that has underpinned the entire neo-con movement since the late 60s. Given the inherently socially conservative mindset of so many US citizens that ideology, if not discredited, remains a ticking bomb awaiting the appropriate time to detonate for effect.
Electing Obama and more Democratic Senators is necessary, but far from sufficient. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
