Originally Posted by
genejockey
That's the basic problem - the whole thing came about because EVERYONE, at every level, assumed somebody was "in charge". "They wouldn't let you do it if it was dangerous". That goes from the homebuyers all the way up to the Fed Chairman, but let's be clear here - the farther up the chain you go, the more that person brings in a big salary based on the expectation that they WON'T do something stupid.
Yes, this is true.
Alan Greenspan was like an old grad school classmate of mine: when he talked, he used a lot of big words and sounded confident, so others assumed, well, that he just must have been smarter than the rest of us. As it turned out, he just smoked more dope than the rest of us.
I have precisely as many degrees in economics as does Greenspan, and rarely could make sense of his public pronouncements. I think the Presidents who appointed and reappointed him, and the Senators on the Banking Committee, must have been truly baffled. But they assumed that a guy with those big words and big glasses just must have been smart.