The timing for suddenly getting chatty couldn’t have been more opportunistic:
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in his new book, bashes President Bush for not responsibly handling the nation’s spending and racking up big budget deficits.
A self-described “libertarian Republican,” Greenspan takes his own party to task for forsaking conservative principles that favor small government.
“My biggest frustration remained the president’s unwillingness to wield his veto against out-of-control spending,” Greenspan wrote.
Bush took office in 2001, the last time the government produced a budget surplus. Every year after that, the government has been in the red. In 2004, the deficit swelled to a record $413 billion. [...]
The ex-Fed chief writes that he laments the loss of fiscal discipline. “‘Deficits don’t matter,’ to my chagrin, became part of Republicans’ rhetoric.”
How exactly do you lose something you never had? Seriously, considering who nominated him to the Fed in the first place you’d think he’d know better than to assert the old “Republicans used to give a fuck back in the Good Old Days” canard. It’s fact time, click the thumbnail:
That’s “bad then, worse now” there. If that’s the standard that Greenspan is talking about then he’s basically writing off anything short of utter disaster as nitpicking.
