Greenspan makes an admission of sorts:
Waxman: Then where do you think you made a mistake?
Greenspan: I made a mistake in the presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders...
Waxman? Do you have any financial responsibility for the financial crisis? (On his ideology)
Greenspan: ...to exist you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not, and what I'm saying to you is, yes, I found a flaw...
He found a flaw? What an asshole.
Nothing in all of Conservative/Bircherland is as creepy as some of the unmitigated horsecrap that has been recycled from Ayn Rand. It's the embodiment of a bloated narcissistic belief that you all suck except for us elitist few.
Here's an excerpt from Matt Taibbi's new book called 'Griftopia"
Greenspan met Rand in the early fifties after leaving Columbia, attending meetings at Rand's apartment with a circle of like-minded jerkoffs who called themselves by the ridiculous name of the Collective and who provided Greenspan the desired forum for social ascent.
These meetings of The Collective would have an enormous impact on American culture by birthing a crackpot anti-theology dedicated to legitimizing self interest -- a grotesquerie called Objectivism that hit the Upper East Side cocktail party circuit hard in the fifties and sixties.
It is important to to spend some time of the seriously demented history of Objectivism, because this lunatic religion that should have choked to death in its sleep decades ago would go on, thanks in large part to Greenspan to provide the entire intellectual context for the financial disasters of of the early twenty first century.
Alan Greenspan, the most influential and powerful central banker of the last half century wrote this, as a young man:
‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”
In other words, anyone on unemployment is a lazy bastard and should be left to perish while the Millionaire Club should feast off of their Bush tax cuts. As you know, Greenspan was at the helm like an anti-Captain Kirk during much of the destruction of the world's financial systems during his reign in politics.
Ben Stein is one of the Capos of these freaks at Fox, where he is housed. DWT has a list of Republican douchebag quotes about the parasite class, including one of Stein's patented quotes about the unemployed.
“The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say ‘generally’ because there are exceptions. But in general as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or do not know how to do a days work."
2011 is going to be a difficult year because the John Galt worshipers will be running the House. It all ties in with Libertarian and Bircher belief systems that say the free markets are our lord and masters.
Digby explains it thus:
Woe be to all those ordinary Joes and Janes who are just working at jobs and raising families and trying to find some happiness in their short time on earth without feeling they need to be conquerors. Among many of the political and business elite in America they are no longer considered neighbors or even customers. They are parasites. In other words, the American Dream is nothing more than a system designed to drain all the "purpose and reason" from the legitimate owners of the world. Taxing the hell out of them will teach them a necessary moral lesson.
