Bespoke has more traffic than we do, so hats off for pointing up Greenspan's 2004 pitch on ARM's.
And Hat Tip to MarketBeat for spreading the word.
And braggadocio from Climateer Investing. Last year, before sub-prime and ARMS got to be page 1 stuff, we thanked Worth Civils of the WSJ for blogrolling us in our post "Allen Greenspan, Worth Civils and the Wall Street Journal.com Energy Roundup" and said:
If I could ask Mr. Civils one question, with his sources, resources and insight, it would be: what does he make of Allen Greenspan's Feb. 23, 2004 speech at the National Credit Union Association in which, as Chairman of the Fed., Greenspan said:We've mentioned our perplexity a quite a few times, the last one being "Alan Greenspan: Competent Criminal or Criminally Incompetant? "
"American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage. "
and
"Indeed, recent research within the Federal Reserve suggests that many homeowners might have saved tens of thousands of dollars had they held adjustable-rate mortgages..."
This one has stumped me for three years.
Thanks for the blogroll Worth.
Here's Bespoke:
...Regarding interest rates, in February 2004, Greenspan highlighted the evolving trends in the mortgage industry and said "there are lots of innovative programs, especially targeting low-income and first time buyers." He went on to suggest that homeowners could save thousands of dollars by switching from fixed-rate to adjustable rate mortgages (We won't even go into how those comments were basically an endorsement about what is going on in the sub-prime mortgage industry)....Go for the dénouement and chart.
