The Washington Post leads with the lashing that lawmakers delivered Alan Greenspan, the man who was once referred to as "the Oracle" on the economy. Angry lawmakers trampled over themselves to blame the former Federal Reserve chairman for the current crisis and criticize decisions Greenspan made during his 18-year tenure.
美國前聯邦儲備局局長格林斯潘承認，他賴以執行美國貨幣政策十八年的主導思想：自由市場概念，在全球經濟危機中給暴露了"錯誤"。
《衛報》的頭條標題說："格林斯潘 - 關於經濟，我錯了，大約是這樣。"
格林斯潘長期反對監管，但是昨天他在美國國會委員會上說在他對銀行業採取的放任政策方面，他有"部分錯誤"。 報道說，格林斯潘被讚譽為戰後最長期繁榮的策劃者，這是他首次承認在席捲全球銀行系統的危機中曾經犯錯。
《國際先驅論壇報》的頭條標題說："格林斯潘罕見地承認失誤"。 格林斯潘今年面對著越來越大的批評，因為他曾經力抗對信貸衍生工具的管制，這個沒有管理的市場是造成目前經濟危機的部分原因。
Greenspan Admits Errors To Hostile House Panel
Alan Greenspan, lauded in Congress while the economy boomed, conceded under harsh questioning from lawmakers that he had made mistakes during his long tenure as Federal Reserve chairman that may have worsened the current slump.
In a four-hour appearance before the House Oversight Committee Thursday, Mr. Greenspan encountered legislators who interrupted his answers, caustically read back his own words from years ago, and forced him to admit that, at least in some ways, his predictions and policies had been wrong.
Returning to Capitol Hill amid a financial crisis rooted in mortgage lending, Mr. Greenspan said he had been wrong to think banks' ability to assess risk and their self-interest would protect them from excesses. But the former Fed chairman, who kept short-term interest rates at 1% for a year earlier this decade, said no one could have predicted the collapse of the housing boom and the financial disaster that followed.
Lawmakers weren't buying his explanations. 'You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime-mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others. And now our whole economy is paying its price,' said Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), chairman of the House committee.
Lawmakers read back quotations from recent years in which Mr. Greenspan said there's 'no evidence' home prices would collapse and 'the worst may well be over.'
Mr. Greenspan said he made 'a mistake' in his hands-off regulatory philosophy, which many now blame in part for sparking the global economic troubles. He conceded that he has 'found a flaw' in his ideology and said he was 'distressed by that.' Yet Mr. Greenspan maintained that no regulator was smart enough to foresee the 'once-in-a-century credit tsunami.'
The hearing made clear how far the 18-year central banker's reputation had fallen from the days when he was hailed for his stewardship in keeping inflation low, holding growth up and helping pull the world through financial crises, including the Asian and other turmoil a decade ago.
Two and a half years after Mr. Greenspan left office, Congress is drawing plans to remake global financial regulation with the kind of tight government hand that he long opposed. At the same House hearing, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, himself a longtime free-market Republican, said he supported merging his agency with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, creating a beefed-up supercop to police certain previously unregulated financial products.
Amid the barrage of questions, Mr. Greenspan dodged and weaved. He would begin meandering responses in the elaborate phraseology that once served him so well, only to be cut off as lawmakers sought to use their brief question time for sharper attacks.
Echo of Watergate
In an echo of the Watergate hearings 35 years ago, Mr. Greenspan was asked when he knew there was a housing bubble and when he told the public about it. He answered that he never anticipated home prices could fall so much. 'I did not forecast a significant decline because we had never had a significant decline in prices,' he said.
Mr. Greenspan's confidence in the resilience of home prices -- shared by most in the industry at the time -- became a critical forecasting error. The belief spurred more mortgage underwriting because lenders assumed that borrowers living on the edge could always refinance or sell their homes for a profit if they ran into trouble. Instead, with home prices now falling, hundreds of thousands of homeowners are facing foreclosure. Prices nationwide have fallen nearly 20% since their 2006 peak, and many economists foresee a further decline of 10% or more in the next year.
The difficulties of forecasting served as a key defense for Mr. Greenspan. The Federal Reserve, with its legions of Ph.D. economists, has a better forecasting record than the private sector, he said, but that's still not enough to prevent every problem. 'We were wrong quite a good deal of the time,' he said. Forecasting 'never gets to the point where it's 100% accurate.'
Subprime mortgages led to a global economic crisis in considerable part because of securitization, in which the home loans were sliced up, packaged into securities and sold off to investors all around the world. Anticipating such a crisis is 'more than anybody is capable of judging,' Mr. Greenspan said.
If the best experts were not able to foresee the development, 'I think we have to ask ourselves, 'Why is that?'' Mr. Greenspan said. 'And the answer is that we're not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far in advance.'
He continued, 'There are always a lot of people raising issues, and half the time they're wrong. The question is what do you do?'
Lawmakers, stung by having to put $700 billion of taxpayer money on the line to rescue the financial system, were unmoved throughout the hearing, and eager to make their own points about the situation.
The former Fed chief also said he was often following the 'will of Congress' during his long tenure and did 'what I was supposed to do, not what I'd like to do.'
Mr. Greenspan has spent much of this year defending his record at the Fed, trying to take apart arguments to show how his decisions were far less significant than outside forces in causing the crisis.
The central bank is blamed for too vigorously spurring home buying through its low short-term interest-rate targets, which were initially set to fight the economic slump after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000-01. Mr. Greenspan maintains that a global savings glut was largely responsible for low rates -- around the globe and not just in the U.S. -- contributing to a housing boom that was world-wide.
Lawmakers took Mr. Greenspan to task for his advocacy of credit-default swaps, an unregulated kind of insurance contract that can help investors protect themselves against another party's bankruptcy. Credit-default swaps were also used as a way of taking risks and are widely blamed for adding to financial-market instability. Rep. Waxman asked pointedly, 'Were you wrong?'
Mr. Greenspan said, 'Partially.' While he cautioned the lawmakers against excessive regulation, he said credit-default swaps 'have serious problems' and, after some pointed questions, agreed they should be subject to oversight.
The treatment was a striking contrast with one of Mr. Greenspan's last appearances before Congress as Fed chairman, on Nov. 3, 2005. 'You have guided monetary policy through stock-market crashes, wars, terrorist attacks and natural disasters,' Rep. Jim Saxton (R., N.J.) told him then. 'You have made a great contribution to the prosperity of the U.S. and the nation is in your debt.'
Kara Scannell / Sudeep Reddy
In a four-hour appearance before the House Oversight Committee Thursday, Mr. Greenspan encountered legislators who interrupted his answers, caustically read back his own words from years ago, and forced him to admit that, at least in some ways, his predictions and policies had been wrong.
Returning to Capitol Hill amid a financial crisis rooted in mortgage lending, Mr. Greenspan said he had been wrong to think banks' ability to assess risk and their self-interest would protect them from excesses. But the former Fed chairman, who kept short-term interest rates at 1% for a year earlier this decade, said no one could have predicted the collapse of the housing boom and the financial disaster that followed.
Lawmakers weren't buying his explanations. 'You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime-mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others. And now our whole economy is paying its price,' said Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), chairman of the House committee.
Lawmakers read back quotations from recent years in which Mr. Greenspan said there's 'no evidence' home prices would collapse and 'the worst may well be over.'
Mr. Greenspan said he made 'a mistake' in his hands-off regulatory philosophy, which many now blame in part for sparking the global economic troubles. He conceded that he has 'found a flaw' in his ideology and said he was 'distressed by that.' Yet Mr. Greenspan maintained that no regulator was smart enough to foresee the 'once-in-a-century credit tsunami.'
The hearing made clear how far the 18-year central banker's reputation had fallen from the days when he was hailed for his stewardship in keeping inflation low, holding growth up and helping pull the world through financial crises, including the Asian and other turmoil a decade ago.
Two and a half years after Mr. Greenspan left office, Congress is drawing plans to remake global financial regulation with the kind of tight government hand that he long opposed. At the same House hearing, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, himself a longtime free-market Republican, said he supported merging his agency with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, creating a beefed-up supercop to police certain previously unregulated financial products.
Amid the barrage of questions, Mr. Greenspan dodged and weaved. He would begin meandering responses in the elaborate phraseology that once served him so well, only to be cut off as lawmakers sought to use their brief question time for sharper attacks.
Echo of Watergate
In an echo of the Watergate hearings 35 years ago, Mr. Greenspan was asked when he knew there was a housing bubble and when he told the public about it. He answered that he never anticipated home prices could fall so much. 'I did not forecast a significant decline because we had never had a significant decline in prices,' he said.
Mr. Greenspan's confidence in the resilience of home prices -- shared by most in the industry at the time -- became a critical forecasting error. The belief spurred more mortgage underwriting because lenders assumed that borrowers living on the edge could always refinance or sell their homes for a profit if they ran into trouble. Instead, with home prices now falling, hundreds of thousands of homeowners are facing foreclosure. Prices nationwide have fallen nearly 20% since their 2006 peak, and many economists foresee a further decline of 10% or more in the next year.
The difficulties of forecasting served as a key defense for Mr. Greenspan. The Federal Reserve, with its legions of Ph.D. economists, has a better forecasting record than the private sector, he said, but that's still not enough to prevent every problem. 'We were wrong quite a good deal of the time,' he said. Forecasting 'never gets to the point where it's 100% accurate.'
Subprime mortgages led to a global economic crisis in considerable part because of securitization, in which the home loans were sliced up, packaged into securities and sold off to investors all around the world. Anticipating such a crisis is 'more than anybody is capable of judging,' Mr. Greenspan said.
If the best experts were not able to foresee the development, 'I think we have to ask ourselves, 'Why is that?'' Mr. Greenspan said. 'And the answer is that we're not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far in advance.'
He continued, 'There are always a lot of people raising issues, and half the time they're wrong. The question is what do you do?'
Lawmakers, stung by having to put $700 billion of taxpayer money on the line to rescue the financial system, were unmoved throughout the hearing, and eager to make their own points about the situation.
The former Fed chief also said he was often following the 'will of Congress' during his long tenure and did 'what I was supposed to do, not what I'd like to do.'
Mr. Greenspan has spent much of this year defending his record at the Fed, trying to take apart arguments to show how his decisions were far less significant than outside forces in causing the crisis.
The central bank is blamed for too vigorously spurring home buying through its low short-term interest-rate targets, which were initially set to fight the economic slump after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000-01. Mr. Greenspan maintains that a global savings glut was largely responsible for low rates -- around the globe and not just in the U.S. -- contributing to a housing boom that was world-wide.
Lawmakers took Mr. Greenspan to task for his advocacy of credit-default swaps, an unregulated kind of insurance contract that can help investors protect themselves against another party's bankruptcy. Credit-default swaps were also used as a way of taking risks and are widely blamed for adding to financial-market instability. Rep. Waxman asked pointedly, 'Were you wrong?'
Mr. Greenspan said, 'Partially.' While he cautioned the lawmakers against excessive regulation, he said credit-default swaps 'have serious problems' and, after some pointed questions, agreed they should be subject to oversight.
The treatment was a striking contrast with one of Mr. Greenspan's last appearances before Congress as Fed chairman, on Nov. 3, 2005. 'You have guided monetary policy through stock-market crashes, wars, terrorist attacks and natural disasters,' Rep. Jim Saxton (R., N.J.) told him then. 'You have made a great contribution to the prosperity of the U.S. and the nation is in your debt.'
Kara Scannell / Sudeep Reddy
格林斯潘承認曾錯估金融形勢
|格
林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)在國會議員們的嚴辭質詢下承認，他在長期擔任美國聯邦儲備委員會(Fed)主席期間犯過錯誤，而這些錯誤可能加劇了目前的經濟蕭條。這與經濟繁榮年代格林斯潘在國會受到的推崇大相徑庭。
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周四格老在眾議院監管委員會召開的聽証會上作証
發 端於按揭貸款的這場金融危機使格林斯潘重返國會山，他對議員們說，自己當年曾錯誤地認為銀行有能力評估其所面臨的風險，而它們出於自身利益的考慮也會避免 濫放貸款。但格林斯潘同時表示，沒人能夠預見到房市繁榮的戛然而止以及緊隨其後的金融災難。他在擔任Fed主席期間曾於本世紀初將美國短期利率保持在1% 的水平達一年之久。
但議員們並不買他這番解釋的帳。眾議院監管委員會主席、加州民主黨人亨利﹒魏克斯曼(Henry Waxman)對格林斯潘說，你當時有權防止導致次貸危機的不負責任放貸行為的發生，許多人都曾建議你這麼做，而現在整個美國經濟都在為此付出代價。
議員們還復述了格林斯潘近年來一些講話的片斷，比如格林斯潘曾說“沒有証據”顯示房價將會暴跌，“最壞的時候可能已經過去。”
格 林斯潘說，他在貫徹自己不幹涉主義監管哲學方面“犯了個錯誤”，許多人現在認為這種監管手法一定程度上引發了當前的全球性經濟困局。格林斯潘承認，他已察 覺這一監管思想“存在問題”，他“為此感到難過”。但格林斯潘堅持認為，沒有哪個監管者能聰明到預見這一“百年一遇的信貸海嘯”。
這次聽証會清楚地表明，與他執掌Fed的那18年相比，格林斯潘的聲譽現在已經跌落到了何種地步。人們當時紛紛盛讚他將通貨膨脹率控制在了低水平，維持了經濟增長，並幫助全世界渡過了一次次金融危機，比如10年前發生在亞洲和世界其他地方的金融動盪。
在 格林斯潘離開Fed兩年半後的今天，國會正著手制定重塑全球金融監管體系的各項計劃，新體系的一大特色就是政府要加強對市場的幹預，而這正是格林斯潘一貫 反對的。美國証券交易委員會(SEC)主席考克斯(Christopher Cox)在出席此次聽証會時表示，他支持讓SEC與美國商品期貨交易委員會(CFTC)合並，組建一個規模更大的超級監管機構，從而能對某些以往未受監管 的金融產品實施監督。考克斯本人一直是持自由市場觀點的共和黨人。
面對議員們洶湧而來的質詢，格林斯潘極盡閃轉騰挪之能事。他一開始又想以字斟句酌式的措辭對議員們的詢問娓娓作答，這種應答方式當年曾使他顯得那麼遊刃有余，但議員們卻不理他這套，他們為了能在有限的提問時間內對格林斯潘發起更猛烈的攻擊，粗暴地打斷他的話。
水門事件再現
聽証會的氣氛使人回想起35年前的水門事件國會聽証。格林斯潘被問到他何時知道存在著住房泡沫以及他又是何時告知公眾這一點的。格林斯潘回答說，他從沒料到房價會跌成這樣。格林斯潘說：我沒有料到房價會大幅下跌，因為房價從來沒有這麼嚴重下跌過。
格 林斯潘對房價彈性的信心成了關鍵的預判錯誤，不過當時業內大多數人士都這麼認為。這種信心帶來了更多的按揭承銷交易，因為貸款機構認為，如果捉襟見肘的借 貸人陷入困境，總可以獲得再融資或者賣房子獲利。然而隨著房價的不斷下跌，有數十萬貸款購房者面臨止贖。全美房價已經較2006年的峰值回落了將近 20%，許多經濟學家預計明年房價還會再跌10%甚至更多。
格林斯潘把預測的困難當作主要擋箭牌。他表示，擁有大批經濟學博士的Fed的預測準確性紀錄一直強於私人部門，但仍然做不到萬無一失。格林斯潘說，我們這次預測的確太偏離實際了。預測“永遠達不到百分百的準確度”。
次級抵押貸款引發了全球性經濟危機在很大程度上是因為証券化產品的問題；住房貸款在証券化過程中被分拆打包成証券產品，再出售給遍布全世界的投資者。格林斯潘辯白道，預測這樣一場危機超過了任何人的判斷能力。
格林斯潘說，如果最好的專家都沒有能力預見到事態發展，我想我們該問問自己“為什麼會這樣？”。答案是我們還不夠聰明，我們預見不到那麼遠的事情。
他說，總是有很多人會提出問題，半數時間他們都是錯的。問題是你能做什麼？
國會議員們在整場聽証會中始終不為所動；他們對不得不投入7,000億美元的納稅人資金來救助金融體系大為光火，急切地想說明他們自己的觀點是對的。
格林斯潘還表示，自己在執掌Fed的多年時間裡經常遵從“國會的意願”，做了“自己被認為該做的事，而不是自己想做的事。”
今年許多時候，格林斯潘都在為自己統領Fed時期的決策辯護，竭力地想辯白外部因素才是引發危機的主要因素，自己的決策次要得多。
外 界怪罪Fed此前將短期利率目標降的太低，從而過度刺激了美國的購房熱潮；Fed調降利率最初是為了阻止美國經濟在2000-2001年網絡股泡沫破滅後 出現下滑。格林斯潘堅稱，全球儲蓄資金充裕（這不僅是美國問題，更是全球范圍內的普遍現象）是利率在低水平徘徊的主要原因，進而引發了全球性的住房熱潮。
議員們還指責格林斯潘支持信用違約掉期產品；這是一種不受監管的保險合約，可以幫助投資者防范對方破產的風險。信用違約掉期還被用做一種風險投機手段，被普遍認為加劇了金融市場的波動性。魏克斯曼直言不諱地問道：“你是不是錯了？”
格林斯潘回答道，“部分是吧”。盡管他就過度監管的危害向議員們提出了警告，他承認信用違約掉期存在著“嚴重問題”；在一些尖銳的問題之後，格林斯潘同意應當對這類產品實施監管。
格 老此番遭遇與2005年11月3日他之前最後一次在國會露面有天壤之別，當時的格老還貴為Fed主席。新澤西州共和黨眾議員薩克斯頓(Jim Saxton)當時恭維道，您引領著美國貨幣政策走過了股災、戰爭、恐怖襲擊和自然災害。您為美國的繁榮作出了巨大貢獻，整個國家都感謝您。
Kara Scannell / Sudeep Reddy
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