McGraw-Hill Education Europe

Introduction

Fleckenstein leaves the reader with his prognostications for the future, among which are:

Baby boomers will feel the pinch more than any other demographic,
Inflation pressures will increase,
US currency will weaken, and
The state of the stock and real estate markets will greatly weaken.

Description

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, Greenspan?s avuncular style carried him through?as did his sage pronouncements of conundrums and the wall of worry.

But people in the know including Bill Fleckenstein were not convinced, and in Greenspan?s 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 Greenspan?s culpability as a serial bubble blower and the individual responsible for our fragile financial state.

Fleckenstein explains just how far-reaching Greenspan?s mess has been flung, and presents damning evidence that contradicts the former Fed chairman?s 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 world?s most prominent brokerages in its wake.

Greenspan?s Bubbles is a no-holds barred, lock-stock-and-barrel portrayal of how Greenspan?s 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.