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revenge of the nerds

Alan Greenspan Defends Himself Against Michael Burry and ‘the Very Small Group’ of People Who Saw the Housing Bubble Coming

Yes, Alan Greenspan skimmed the op-ed in yesterday's Times written by Michael Burry, in which Burry says that the former Fed chairman's blindness to the housing bubble was caused by his dismissive attitude toward opinions coming from outside his inner circle, Greenspan told ABC News. But look, this guy — what's his name again? Burry? Greenspan isn't sure, he read the op-ed "very quickly" — is very likely just one of a "very, very small group" of people who "purely by luck" managed to guess the direction of the economy. Might he be smarter than that? Maybe, but Greenspan doubts it. If Burry had been someone worth paying attention to at the time, Greenspan would have known about him. There are only three or four people in the world who were really smart enough to see the crisis coming properly, and Greenspan is friends with all of them. No, there are not six or seven. Greenspan doesn't know about this guy Peter Schiff, either, who is all, like, "Alan Greenspan is full of it." Sure, he wrote in his little book and said on television multiple times that the housing market was going to collapse. But how was Greenspan supposed to know about that? It wasn't like Schiff mattered back then. It would be like if you worked at the SEC, and you started getting letters from a guy saying, "the world's largest hedge fund is a fraud." Would you believe him? Of course not. If everyone listened to the opinions of random people who seem to know what they're talking about, where would we be? Oh, wait, don't answer that.

Alan Greenspan responds to Michael Burry's NYT Op-Ed, Peter Schiff Wants A Public Debate With Alan Greenspan [Distressed Volatility]

I Saw the Crisis Coming. Why Didn’t the Fed? [NYT]