Political Cartoons

The talk I referred to with Greenspan involved (at first) a Fed move to lower inflation with a small move in the Fed rate, a move which didn't work. Greenspan later referred to the Asian markets as the article states. As I cited, the reference I found came from the Thomas Homer-Dixon book The Ingenuity Gap. I did not copy the detail of the original missed teaching moment that affected the Fed chair, just the conclusions he later reached as mentioned in his speech. I could, if you insist, borrow that book once again from the library and check to make sure the reference was as I remember.

In short, you are proving the entire theme of Homer-Dixon's book correct. In it, he notes:

If economic experts are susceptible to fads like the rest of us, it's partly because economic theories, data, and institutions are often weak. . . . Current economic theories do not give us an accurate understanding of the non-linear and hypercomplex behavior of the international economic system. . . . In the absence of strong theories, data, and institutions, facile economic nostrums and fads become received wisdom. Confronted with rapid and confusing changes, experts and policy-makers cling to this wisdom.

(Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, p. 162.)

Continue to cling to the nostrum that words like "endogenous" and "exogenous" apply to our current banking system absolutely (as you were no doubt taught), and that whipping out such a non sequitur is tantamount to victory, and you will be wrong.

Sorry. Life's a bitch that way.