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New Greenspan Book Attacks Bush
Forbes.com Staff 09.15.07, 1:35 PM ET

Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has criticized
President George W. Bush for paying too too little attention to
financial discipline. 

In a forthcoming book, Greenspan, 81, says Bush ignored his advice to
veto "out-of-control" bills that sent the U.S. deeper into deficit.
"Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the
weighing of long-term consequences," he writes of the Bush
administration. 

The Republicans deserved to lose control of Congress in last year's
elections, Greenspan writes in The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a
New World, to be published on Sept, 17. He charges that Republicans in
Congress "swapped principle for power" and "ended up with neither". 

Greenspan said he never became part of Bush's inner circle, in which
dissent from staff wasn't encouraged, and that his hopes that the Bush
administration would become a "reincarnation" of the fiscally
conservative Ford administration never materialized. But despite
differences over economic policy, Greenspan said the president kept a
promise not to interfere with Fed policy. 

The former Fed chairman also writes that his 2001 testimony before
Congress that was interpreted as an endorsement of the president's
proposed tax cuts was politically careless. Greenspan, who was famous
for his gnomic prognostications on the economy, now says his words
were misinterpreted. 

Greenspan stepped down last year after nearly 19 years in the post. He
served under six U.S. presidents - either as Federal Reserve chairman
or adviser. 

Of those, he writes, in contrast to his harsh views on the incumbent,
he found Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton the most intelligent, Gerald
Ford the most normal and likeable and Ronald Reagan the most devoted
to free markets, though his grasp of economics ``wasn't very deep or
sophisticated.'' 


http://www.forbes.com/markets/currencies/2007/09/15/greenspan-bush-book-face-cx_pm_0915autofacescan01.html


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