The stock market crash of 1987, the Savings & Loan crisis, the Asian
crisis, the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, the stock market bubble of 2000, the
feared Y2K crisis, and now the housing crisis Alan Greenspan has a long history of
slashing interest rates to bail out investors who should not need rescuing. In times past,
Greenspans avuncular style carried him throughas did his sage pronouncements of conundrums
and the wall of worry.
But people in the know including Bill Fleckenstein were not convinced, and in Greenspans
Bubbles our author reveals why the economic decline and market chaos he and others
predicted in 2003 has come to pass. More importantly, Fleckenstein makes a compelling case
of Greenspans culpability as a serial bubble blower and the individual responsible for our
fragile financial state.
Fleckenstein explains just how far-reaching Greenspans mess has been flung, and presents
damning evidence that contradicts the former Fed chairmans public naivete concerning
shifts in the market and the economy. In newly released transcripts of private meetings,
it is clear that Greenspan had a much better understanding of the effects his decisions
would have. Highlights of these meetings will be featured throughout the book, as will a
timeline of disastrous decisions that were ultimately left for someone else to clean up.
Whether banker, broker, CEO, homeowner, hedge fund manager, 401-K holder or politician,
people have been conditioned to believe that the Fed would ride to their rescue before any
serious calamity could befall them. Their views towards risk have been altered as have
expectations about future investment gains. The country has taken on more leverage and
assumed more risk because 20 years of Alan Greenspan has taught them that the Fed will
always bail them out and that asset (stocks and real estate) prices will always go higher.
The author believes that the fall out of the Greenspan Put is a country in for a rude
awakening. The problem is too big to bail out, and has affected markets at home and around
the world, leaving billion dollar hedge funds by the worlds most prominent brokerages in
its wake.
Greenspans Bubbles is a no-holds barred, lock-stock-and-barrel portrayal of how Greenspans
words and actions have led a generation to behave in ways that would never stand the test
of time, seriously damaging the financial and economic stability of investors and citizens
alike. In this story, the big bear catches up with Goldilocks.
Bill Fleckenstein (Seattle, WA) is president of Fleckenstein Capital a hedge fund
firm based in Seattle. He writes a daily Market Rap column featured on his
Fleckensteincapital.com site as well as the popular column Contrarian Chronicles for MSN
Money that gets as many as 400,000 readers each week.
From 1988 until just recently, Fred Sheehan (Boston, MA) was the Director of
Asset Allocation Services worked at John Hancock Financial Services in Boston where he set
investment policy and asset allocation for institutional pension plans. Fred has written
the monthly Market Outlook and Quarterly Market Review for clients from 1990 to 2001, as
well as several guest articles for Marc Faber's Gloom, Boom & Doom Report. Fred has
more recently contributed to Whiskey & Gunpowder and the Prudent Bear websites among
others
Table of Contents
Introduction: A True Accounting: The Greenspan Era (1987-2006)
Chapter 1: How Wrong Can One Man Be? (1973-1987)
Chapter 2: The Coronation of The Bubble King (1995-1997)
Chapter 3: The FOMC Meets the Greenspan Put -- and Yawns (1998-1999)
Chapter 4: Bubbleonians Running the Asylum: The Bubble Blow Off (1999-2000)
Chapter 5: The Stock Bubble Bursts: The Tech Miracle Was a Mirage (2000-2001)
Chapter 6: Home Sweet Home: Housing Saves Us from the Stock Bubble (2001-2003)
Chapter 7: The Housing Hot Potato: The Real Estate Bubble Fuels the ATM
(2003-2007)
Conclusion: The Consequences of the Loss of Fear (2007 and Beyond)
208 pages, Hardcover