Alan Greenspan, who’s busy promoting his latest book,The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World .

He’s come under a lot of fire lately for re-writing history to clean his record. Richard Russell, veteran writer of the Dow Theory Letters, said:
“I finished the Greenspan book. I firmly believe that history will see this little egotistical pip-squeak as one of the premier disasters in US history. In my opinion, Greenspan is the ultimate ‘Mr. Inflation’. Greenspan almost single-handedly set the world on the high-liquidity, super-inflation path, all the while saying or thinking that the Fed was acting ‘as if’ the dollar was still backed by gold.

“What’s so disgusting is that Greenspan traded all his earlier ideals for power and ego. Greenspan never did anything that required real courage. Greenspan was the total political animal. His legacy will decline as the years go by.

“The saddest thing is that Greenspan leaves poor, humble, honest Fed Chief Bernanke in an untenable situation. In a US so dependent on high inflation and massive liquidity, Bernanke has no choice but to ‘inflate or die’. In a normal situation, the US could take a recession and take the correction. Not now – with the US depending so heavily on inflation and massive liquidity, any substantial contraction in the money supply would bring the US economy to its knees.”

Here’s a very nice video about Mr Bubble-man, Alan Greenspan, and his inflationary tactics.

I was planning on reading Greenspan’s book (eventually), but I guess Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing 7 Trillion Dollars would make a better read.