Excerpt from the following article:   "There was a big increase in the birth rate in 1946. Many who were born that year are going to want to retire at age 62. The math is easy:              62        +1946          2008     "So my prediction had been that 2008 would be the beginning of something."
				In 1982, Mr. Alan Greenspan chaired a commission that plagiarized an important analysis of Social Security demographics. The work of the commission was considered such a great success that it propelled Greenspan to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve.           The reason we know about that is that our company had published that aforementioned Social Security analysis in 1981. The 1982 Greenspan commission prepared what was called the Report of the National Commission on Social Security Reform. It was released in early 1983, and I was later able to examine a copy at a federal document depository at the Indiana State Library.  For the sake of brevity, the publication of the government commission is referred to below as "the 1983 Greenspan report."           At this point the reader may be mentally accusing us of blowing our own horn. That would be a natural enough reaction on the part of any reader. And that reaction might be one reason why that chapter of the career of the Chairman did not receive any media attention--except from us--after he became Fed chairman.           Another reason might be fear of vengeance by the Chairman. You see, Greenspan belonged to what, without being in any way unfair, might be called a "pagan" philosophical cult. Said cult had been founded by a female Russian-American novelist, and enjoyed a commercial vogue when I was in college.         The cult of the novelist did not have a real historical or philosophical tradition behind it, and its ideas were not difficult to explain. For example, the extreme importance of selfishness was extolled.         Selfishness was a great virtue, accoriding to the cult's leader.         Such a philosophy was what is sometimes called intellectually accessible. That is, just about anyone, except perhaps a saint, could understand it easily. A cannibal dwelling in the island jungles off the shores of Southeast Asia could understand such a teaching--as could any and every small child. With the cannibal, one could probably get the teaching across with sign language of rubbing the stomach and smacking the lips. Perhaps the simplicity of its message helped to account both for the commercial viability of the cult--and also for the brevity of the popularity of the cult. Continue
Was Alan Greenspan to blame for the economic downturn of 2007/08?      I asked Dr. C Hoyt Bleakley, of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, that question in December 2007.      According to Bleakley, Greenspan's "reputation from the '90s was overblown and we're seeing that now."