Scanning the “news” announcements on the Loyola College Web page I noticed that the economics department is sponsoring a panel discussion by Richmond Fed bureaucrats on the ill effects of mortgage foreclosures on “neighborhoods and communities.” (Scroll down to the March 31 event).
This is not unlike a panel of arsonists discussing the ill effects of house fires on “neighborhoods and communities.” They create the problem in the first place, and then pretend to be THE experts on what to do about it and how to prevent future occurrences.
A more appropriate educational effort would be to hang Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke in effigy in front of the business school building.
(My friend Yuri Maltsev, who was once an economic adviser to Gorbachev before the collapse of the Soviet Union, recently told me of a phone call he received from an old Russian Army friend back in Moscow. The old veteran was watching Congressman Henry Waxman interrogate Greenspan at a hearing broadcast on CNN. This was after the bursting of the housing bubble. After describing the interrogation the old veteran, who was probably with the KGB in the old days, said: “Yuri, will they take him [Greenspan] out and shoot him?!”).
8:07 am on March 18, 2009
