[socksset]

It is hysterical Greenspan gets blamed for this when we have barely been able to keep rates off the floor the past 13 years since he left.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

If 2002-2004 was keeping rates too low then what do you call the past 14 years?

[adam_arthur]

He cut the funds rate from 6% to 1% pretty much overnight, which was excessive given there was only a mild recession at the time.

To his credit he did start ratcheting it up shortly after.

Low rate from past decade is for many reasons, high unemployment for most of the 2010s is the main one. Weak fiscal response to 2008 leading to slow recovery.

The Fed shouldn't be the tool to try to address impact of a recession, it's much healthier to address through an intelligently crafted fiscal package. But the ease of being able to unilaterally set monetary policy tends to corrupt the Fed's decision making and skew it towards short term problems.

All that being said, Greenspan did a hell of a better job than Powell overall