Greenspan's Fraud

How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy

With a career spanning two decades and 3 presidents, fomer Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is undoubtedly the most influential personality in the history of American economics. Often times stock market indices around the world would rise and fall at the breath of his words. Stranglely, this continues on till today, despite the man having left the job for a considerable amount of time.

But the legendary figure's reign is not without contreversy. The work, aptly titled Greenspan's Fraud, is perhaps the most vocal critique that has been compiled to date. Written by Economics Professor Ravi Batra from the Southern Methodist University of Dallas, it details the rise and rise of Alan Greenspan's career, his influence and his policies till the day he resigned.

Batra argues that Greenspan has extracted trillions of dollars from the American middle class. All this has been done while solidly protecting the rich through measures that have been deliberately engineered.

Dubbed "Greenomics", Batra also lays the case as to why Greenspan has unwittingly initiated several economic crashes that has affected millions of lives around the world. For example just before the dot-com mania that eventually fizzled out, Greenspan was documented as saying to President Clinton that "This is the best economy I have seen in 50 years" and did nothing to stop the mindless speculation that was consuming the market.

Though convincingly argued, some of the claims made in this 278-page hard cover seems amplified beyong the justifiable. For example, several of his critiques have not been acompanied by a more viable solution. Besides that, the writing stlye is hardly entertaining and more or less resembles the angry ramblings of a nagging professor that we have all come across in university. For that, I doubt that Greenspan's Fraud will join his list of best-sellers anytime soon.

However should you choose to overlook this literary annoyance, you might find a little eye opener here and there in Greenspan's Fraud.