Bob: Greenspan had no reason to stop the practices. He is in this mess up to his eyeballs, as are the politicians and for the simple reason that no one wanted to bell one particular cat: Telling the American people that we can no longer afford to live the way we do.

Wages have been stagnant for 30+ years now. We’ve been progressively shipping our manufacturing capability overseas for years. We don’t make things anymore, we push paper (the so-called “service” industry) and overvalued paper at that. They’ve been hiding the facts for years now and no one wanted to be the one to tell us this party’s over and the bill is due. So Greenspan presided over nearly two decades of feckless and reckless monetary policy and the pols not only loosened the regulatory leash, they threw it away completely.

Meanwhile, ever larger debt creation at the personal, commercial and national level gave the appearance of “wealth” and “prosperity” where none really existed, but as long as we had our McMansions, Hummers, plasma TVs and lattes, who gave a shit, right?