| Special Interview with Alan Greenpan |
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| This is Bad Andy and I’m here with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Al Greenspin to get the strait scoop on the economy and interest rates and what all of this means to me and why I should care. As best I can tell, Al has been the chairman of the Federal Reserve since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Pretty much, when the economy doesn’t fail, it’s because Al is holding us back from the brink of ruination and when it does fail, it’s because of circumstances beyond his control. I had to pull a real snow job on Al and pretend like I didn’t know anything about the economy and pretend that I don’t have a degree in economics and I didn’t go to business school and I couldn’t do his job better without having to quit my day job. BA: So Al, any quick thoughts before we get started? AG: Well, first of all, I’d like to just say that the ecoAn Interview with Al Greenspin, Swami of Interest Rates, the Money Supply, the Stock Market And other ways the Government Conspires with Banks, Insurance Agents, the Freemasons, Credit Card Companies, and Zoroaster to Rip You Offnomy is on track. We cut interest rates another half point a couple of weeks ago. That should be everything we need to make a full recovery. BA: Let’s talk about that for a few minutes. Isn’t this the eleventh time you’ve cut interest rates this year and haven’t you made that prediction that it would be enough every time? AG: That’s not true. I’ve only predicted that the cuts would be enough five of those times. The other times I admitted that more cuts might be needed later. BA: But half a point? People are saying that’s a drastic move. AG: Not really. We’ve had half point cuts before. The economy needs a big boost right now. We wanted to give it the shot in the arm it needed. BA: But isn’t this desperation? You’ve cut interest rates ten times already and it didn’t seem to do much. AG: Well, yes, that is true. Every time we cut rates it seems to have less and less of an effect. BA: So is the economy like a heroin addict getting less and less out of every hit? AG: I’m not sure I like putting it in those terms but it is close to the truth. BA: So how did the interest rate get up so high in the first place? AG: I raised it. BA: Well, that’s rich. How many times exactly did you raise the interest rate? AG: Fifteen. BA: Fifteen!? AG: Well yes, but I spread it out over more than two years. BA: Still, don’t you think that was a bit excessive? AG: No. The economy was growing too fast. I needed to slow it down. BA: So you raised interest rates fifteen times? AG: It didn’t slow down. No matter how much I tried to stop it, the economy kept growing. BA: And all of those people working and making money was bad so you had to put a stop to it. AG: You’re making me out to be the bad guy here. It had to be done. BA: But weren’t people making money and the markets were up and we had double-digit economic growth. It was like Ronald Reagan was president all over again. AG: But it was all just on paper. Most of those companies were losing money hand over fist and yet their stock price kept going up. Every time they had a secondary offering, people would buy even more stock and yet they kept losing money. BA: You’re talking about the dot-coms I assume? AG: Yes. The dot-coms lost money every quarter and people continued to throw money at them. BA: You’d think we were all Democrats and dot-com was some convoluted social welfare scheme. BA: But seriously, after everyone was proclaiming the efficiencies of going electronic, didn’t the dot-coms make sense? A lot of them were losing less and less money every quarter as more and more people began to use them. Wouldn’t they have eventually made money if not for the engineered economic collapse? Granted, some of them were idiots and I had the distinct honor of working with some of them, but some of them would have pulled it out. AG: Well, that may be true, but I didn’t feel comfortable with the wait and see attitude. The facts might have taken years to come out and I felt that we needed to act swiftly. BA: So wait a minute. You’re telling me that hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs and billions of dollars in the stock market just went poof because you’re an impatient son of a bitch and didn’t want to wait for all the facts before you took drastic action? AG: Well, I don’t like to look at it like that. BA: I’m sure you don’t. AG: I think it was important to act swiftly. Think about what might have happened if we had waited a year. BA: People could have kept their jobs for longer? Come to think of it, a year after you were jacking the rates up, you were backpedaling trying to lower them again. If you sat on your ass and did nothing like a proper bureaucrat, we could have avoided all of this. AG: No, no, the economy needed a wake up call. We had to raise rates. BA: You don’t get it, do you? You caused all of this misery. I ought to kick your ass right now, but I promised Big BC this article would be at least four pages long. AG: I did no such thing. When the economy needed a sedative, I raised the rates. When it needed a stimulant, I lowered them. BA: You did cause misery. Because if you we swerved down the economic road like an intoxicated Massachusetts senator, yanking the wheel back and forth violently until we come to a bridge … You left the poor working stiffs in this country to drown and it all could have been avoided if you had set a course more like Paul Volker and less like Ted Kennedy. AG: I don’t like being compared to my predecessor. The economy I’m managing is so much more delicate and has so many more layers of complexities that I … BA: Bullshit! You just like being on the front page and making the president and congress kiss your ass because they can’t easily remove you. Most of the rate changes you’ve made have just been to get the attention of The Wall Street Journal. I’m sure that making economic news when there really wasn’t any hasn’t soured your book deal any either. AG: That’s preposterous! I never changed the interest rate to make the front page and I never engaged in any electioneering either. BA: Who said anything about electioneering? AG: You didn’t accuse me of rigging the 1992 presidential election by making the economy falter during campaign season? BA: Nope, that was all your guilty conscience talking. AG: Fuck. |
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| Alan Greenspan |
| Bad Andy |
| Job: Duty: Education: |
| Marketing Analyst Feature Columnist Rant Consultant Figure how to get you to spend more of your money so he can get paid. And to otherwise piss you off. BS, Economics, UNLV MBA, UNLV |
| Chairman of the Federal Reserve Swami of Interest Rates, the Money Supply, and the Stock Market Manipulate the economy and conspire with Banks, Insurance Agents, Freemasons, Credit Card Companies, and Zoroaster to Rip You Off. BS, Economics, NYU MA, Economics, NYU Ph.D. Economics, NYU |
| Job: Duty: Education: |
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