[JumpCrisscross]

> people that wilfully and knowingly created the conditions for the crisis

This is unnecessarily conspiratorial. Particularly given the proximate causes of the crisis erupted from domains over which the Federal Reserve had pretty much zero pre-crisis oversight (broker-dealers and insurers).

Did Greenspan's policies throw fuel on the fire? Yes. Was that done to create a crisis? No.

[kurthr]

I think a legitimate question is whether there was political motivation to inflate W's economy, and whether he should have known the consequences.

From wikipedia (and Barrons):

His dissertation is not available from the university[17] since it was removed at Greenspan's request in 1987, when he became Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In April 2008, however, Barron's obtained a copy and notes that it includes "a discussion of soaring housing prices and their effect on consumer spending; it even anticipates a bursting housing bubble".[18]

[hindsightbias]

2002:

> To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-di...