Goodby Mr. Greenspan. You will be missed!

And thanks for a job well done!

It is the end of an era. Alan Greenspan retired this week from his position for 18 years as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

According to Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post, some of Alan Greenspan's apparent accomplishments since he began the job in 1987 are:

"• The U.S. economy (gross domestic product) has expanded 72 percent, and its growth rate has outstripped that of virtually every other advanced country.

• The number of payroll jobs increased by 32.1 million (31 percent) from August 1987 (Greenspan’s first month) to December 2005.

• There have been only two brief recessions, those of 1990-91 and 2001, lasting a total of 16 months.

• Business productivity has risen about 50 percent since 1987.

• Interest rates dropped from 8.39 percent on 10-year Treasury bonds and 9.31 percent on 30-year mortgages (1987 averages) to 4.5 percent and 6.1 percent.

• The Dow Jones industrial average quadrupled from 2,680 on Greenspan’s first day (Aug. 11) to 10,900 (as of Monday)."

Of course there are other factors involved, but Greenspan certainly had his finger in the pie.


Alan Greenspan recently restated that he did not believe that the housing market is an overinflated bubble about to burst. In an article by Broderick Perkins in Realty Times, Greenspan was quoted as saying in a speech before the America's Community Bankers Annual Convention, "These concerns cannot be readily dismissed. Debt leverage of all types is often troublesome when one judges the stability of the economy. Should home prices fall, we would have reason to be concerned about mortgage debt; but measures of household financial stress do not, at least to date, appear overly worrisome."

Greenspan said 75 percent of all outstanding first mortgages were originated with a loan-to-value ratios of 80 percent or less and when all mortgages are considered the loan-to-value ratio is about 45 percent, giving the nation, as a whole, a 55 percent equity stake in residential real estate.

"It would take a large, and historically most unusual, fall in home prices to wipe out a significant part of home equity," he told conventioneers.


Goodby Mr. Greenspan. You will be missed! Good luck to Ben Bernanke, his successor. I hope you learned much from Alan.

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