Alan Greenspan on Bill Clinton

[snopes]

Comment: This received just today:

A quote by Greenspan this past weekend in an interview:

"Say what you will about his politics, say what you will about his
personality, but Bill Clinton is the smartest man I have ever come across
in all of my 82 years. When he first came on in 1992, I would give him
tutorial sessions and by the end of his presidency, he knew my job better
than I did. I can tell you with 100% certainty that we would not be in our
current economic situation if he were in office. Clinton was, at first, a
student of economics and insisted upon knowing every minute detail of data
and its impact. Our current president has no such intellectual appetite or
even curiousity. I mean none."

[Recklessmess]

It's consistent with something Greenspan wrote in his book:

Greenspan praised former President Clinton and his attitude toward economic policies, saying, "either Clinton shared many of my views on the way the economic system was evolving and on what should be done, or he was the cleverest chameleon I'd ever encountered."

"Clinton was often criticized for inconsistency and for a tendency to take all sides in a debate, but that was never true about his economic policy," he wrote. "A consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth became a hallmark of his presidency."

Greenspan said Clinton and former President Nixon were "by far the smartest presidents I've worked with."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/16/greenspan.book/

and here:

Greenspan writes, "I played no role in finding the answer, but I had to admire the one Clinton and his policymakers came up with." Greenspan reserves his highest praise for Bill Clinton, whom he described in his book as a sponge for economic data who maintained "a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth."

http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2007/...e_by_alan.html

[Ali Infree]

I think Bill Clinton is pretty bright, but I would not want Alan Greenspan talking me up.

During his reign at the Federal Reserve there was precious little concern for consumers (i.e. real people like us) and not a lot of regulatory oversight.

Ali "supply or dement" Infree