needed to spot the housing bubble and to know its collapse would be really bad news for the economy. More than anyone else in the country he was in a position to stop the growth of the bubble.

"Suppose that, instead of extolling the wonders of adjustable rate mortgages, Greenspan used his public addresses to warn people that they were buying into an overpriced housing market; and he warned investors that the subprime mortgage backed securities they were buying were filled with fraudulent mortgages. Suppose further that he used the Fed's research staff to document these facts.

"Greenspan could have used the regulatory powers of the Fed to crack down on the bad mortgages being issued by the banks under the Fed's jurisdiction, as his fellow governor Edward Gramlich urged.the damage he has done to the country, then the media should do it for him. The only thing he has to say that would be newsworthy is that he's sorry."

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And lest we forget what really happened, a look back to the original scene as we see in an article from The New York Times by Edmund L. Andrews on October 23, 2008 that generated the opening paragraph of today's posting, "Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation.":

"WASHINGTON — For years, a Congressional hearing with Alan Greenspan was a marquee event. Lawmakers doted on him as an economic sage. Markets jumped up or down depending on what he said. Politicians in both parties wanted the maestro on their side.

"But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of