Apr

10

Alan Greenspan: A response to my critics

By Teresa | Filed Under The Podcast | Start a Discussion 

Greenie responds to throngs of Monday morning quarterbacks:

Much of the commentary critical of my FT article is directed less at its substance and more, as Wolf describes it, to “the ideology I display.” Ideology, which regrettably has become a pejorative term, defines that set of ideas that we each believe explains how the world works and therefore how we need to act to achieve our goals. Some of our views of causative forces are rational, some are otherwise. Much of what we confront in reality is uncertain, some of it frighteningly so. Yet people have no choice but to make judgments on the nature of the tenuous ties of causation or they are immobilized.

I do have an ideology. So does each of the members of the Forum. I trust our views are subject to the same standards of evidence that apply to all rational discourse. My view of how the efficiency of global capitalism has evolved over the decades as new evidence has appeared contradicting some earlier judgments and confirming others. I have been surprised by the fierceness of investors in retrenching from risk since August. My view of the range of dispersion of outcomes has been shaken, but not my judgment that free competitive markets are by far the unrivaled way to organize economies. We have tried regulation ranging from heavy to central planning. None meaningfully worked. Do we wish to retest the evidence?

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