William Greider
The Nation

Alan Greenspan has come back from the tomb of history to correct the record. He did not make any mistakes in his eighteen-year tenure as Federal Reserve chairman. He did not endorse the regressive Bush tax cuts of 2001 that pumped up the federal deficits and aggravated inequalities. He did not cause the housing bubble that is now in collapse. He did not ignore the stock market bubble that subsequently melted away and cost investors $6 trillion. He did not say the Iraq War is “largely about oil.”

Check the record. These are all lies.

Greenspan’s testimony endorsing the Bush tax cuts was extremely influential but now he wants to run away from it.

In the instance of Iraq, Greenspan is actually correcting his own memoir, The Age of Turbulence, which just came out. This weekend, newspapers reported provocative snippets from the book, including this: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what every everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

Wow, talk about your “inconvenient truth.” Greenspan was blithely acknowledging what official Washington has always denied and the news media faithfully ignored. “Blood for oil.” No, no, no, that’s not what he meant, Greenspan corrected in a follow-up interview. [Bob Woodward in Monday's Washington Post] He was only saying that “taking out Saddam was essential” for “oil security” and the global economy.

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