The incredible shrinking man

Alan Greenspan keeps shrinking. He now seems like a very small man.

How could we have ever thought this man's every word was so wise, so steeped in vast knowledge and experience, so oracular, that Congress and Wall Street tycoons waited with bated breath for his latest, often cryptic utterance?

Or-a-cle: noun. 1 a : a person (as a priestess of ancient Greece) through whom a deity is believed to speak.

Huffington Post's Ryan Grim writes about the secret minutes of a 2004 Federal Reserve meeting that have just been released:

As top Federal Reserve officials debated whether there was a housing bubble and what to do about it, then-Chairman Alan Greenspan argued that the dissent should be kept secret so that the Fed wouldn't lose control of the debate to people less well-informed than themselves.

"We run the risk, by laying out the pros and cons of a particular argument, of inducing people to join in on the debate, and in this regard it is possible to lose control of a process that only we fully understand," Greenspan said, according to the transcripts of a March 2004 meeting.

At the same meeting, several Fed officials did raise concern about rising housing prices, but Greenspan said it was "nothing to worry about."

Now, here in 2009 and 2010, after it did all go bust, Greenspan says he didn't see it coming -- nobody could have seen it coming he keeps repeating, even after he looks ridiculous saying it.

Of course !!! How could he see it coming if he only listened to his own echo chamber? And kept any hint of dissent secret so they wouldn't lose control of the debate to people less well-informed than themselves.

No more oracles, please. They turn into tiny little, old men.

Ralph