It would n't have taken much insight to see that cheap credit was being hedged into housing and the building plots beneath them instead of managing demand for goods and services.Perhaps the dull young men wasting time and money creating complex algorithms to predict economic trends to no purpose whatsoever would have been better off reading Henry George and Silvio Gesell who said years ago that free market economies could be overwhelmed by inflated property prices .Greenspan calls the collapse of the property bubble "an accident waiting to happen" but it was avery slow motion accident which a lot of people could see a long way off..

DBC Reed, Northampton, UK

The credit crunch is caused by the Banks to cover Bank fraud. They have bundeledfraud/ mortages-forsed by tax aprasel and sold them to Government agencys now they want a bail out for raising interest rates and forclosing on property, that to hold, they will have to put up greater reserves with the fed! Now they want us to pick up the tab.

Charles Case, Sherman, Texas

Cath: Excellent. He's still employed; now his job is to say stuff like this so that they can kill the Dollar, as they planned all along. "The Fed is powerless", Isn't he meddling in the national security of US now?

Not Limey, boston, ma

Ron Paul is raising millions of dollars today right now because people are dissatisfied with the result of the country's financial situation.

JC Bollers, Provo, UT

The root of the current crisis lies in the lack of controls and standards over how money or credit is issued for the largest credit market: mortgages. I just got a letter from country wide financial telling me about their 40 yr loan..... and I can already see another issue with them giving out 40 year mortgages to 55yr old people! Just another crisis waiting to happen in the future.....
These mortgages are again disguised as various exotic investment vehicles and rated by agencies for their risk. We need to extend controls over to the agencies that provide these risk ratings as they clearly seem to have been misguided.
Also the intervention of the Feds seem to have added liquidity to the markets and is aimed at bailing out these banks and nothing is being done to save the homeowners... and also the tax payer is going to have to pay for it in terms of increased inflation. It is time to take a hard look at what went wrong and create controls to prevent future repeats.

Sam, Boston, USA

Don't know how my Indian ancestors lived for 1000's and 1000's of years without the white folks money or world???

ShadowDancer, Flagstaff,

Mr Greenspan was part of the problem. To pontificate is easy. He should have used foresight while he had responsibility, rather than hindsight now. Do I see any apology from him?

Ian J, Woking, UK

“The root of the current crisis, as I see it, lies back in the aftermath of the Cold War, when market capitalism quietly, but rapidly, displaced much of the discredited central planning that was so prevalent in the Third World,”

Quietly? It was with a triumphant "we won, they lost, our way is the only way, we're totally right, everyone else can go screw themselves" attitude that market capitalism, deregulation and financial deregulation was forced onto much of the rest of the world. The arrogance of the US and Britain since the cold war has been breath-taking, and major wake-up calls such as LTCM and Enron were ignored in favour of continued deregulation and a zealous, neo-liberal agenda of unfettered capitalism.

Greenspan, the BoE and governments appear to have been totally complicit in fuelling this bubble.

Cath, Edinburgh, Scotland

my view is that since mr. greenspan is a gold bug he "enabled" the fiat money disaster thats looming large on the horizon. forcing a return to honest and sound money. it may sound like a crackpot theory but,,,its my take on it judging by all i know about him and of human nature.

joseph canzoneri jr, long island , new york

Alan Greenspan’s policies merely delayed the necessary market corrections. So instead of having a few minor recessions we can now have one really big one.

Well done Mr. Greenspan.

Keith, Ashford,

This is Alan Greenspan’s latest theory on why he does not accept any responsibility for what has happened in global markets. These theories appear to be coming thick and fast from Mr. Greenspan. I am really looking forward to his next theory ….. not.

Keith, Ashford,