	Reprinted from www.libertylobby.org, home of The SPOTLIGHT archive
Home About us Archives Search Links Support us Contact us Books	Greenspan: The Man Behind the Mask Taxpayers Bear Brunt of Swindler's Schemes: A brief look at Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's checkered background sheds some light on the career of this shady financial mind. By James Harrer Is Alan Greenspan the capo di tutti capi -- the boss of all bosses? More than a trillion dollars in criminal cash are washed through the world's financial institutions each year. At least half of it goes through major American banks such as Chase Manhattan, the Rockefeller dynasty's financial flagship. These megabanks become a "prime facilitator" of Large-scale money-laundering, a congressional investigation found this month. Although the study, compiled by Democratic staffers of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, does not specifically make the point, it leaves the "inescapable conclusion" that under the lawless stewardship of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan the entire U.S. payments system has become "criminalized," said Dr. Aldo Milinkovich, a former senior Treasury examiner. Paradoxically, the Senate report came to light as Greenspan was basking in the adulation of the Establishment media, where he was euligized as a miracle-working financial genius, the "Maestro" whose manipulative genius kept the U.S. economy soaring, as Robert Woodward, a celebrated Washington Post editor, put it in a recent book. But even Woodward, a gushing admirer, admits in his book that the key difference between the Fed chairman and other central bankers may be that Greenspan was willing to do things that were "not legal." But having let slip this crucial fact, Woodward offers no explanation for it. His book takes little not of the Fed chairman's early years of economic apprenticeship or his ideological background. CRIMINAL CONNECTIONS Other researchers, however, have been not so reticent. "Greenspan received his intellectual formation as a acolyte of the so-called 'Objectivist' movement headed by the late Ayn Rand in the '60s," noted author Christopher Hitchens. It was a extremist Libertarian cult group the "exalted greed, ruthless profiteering, and taught harsh contempt for Christianity and any notion of treating others charitable," Hitchens recalled. Moreover, behind that enigmatic demeanor, Greenspan still believes in the Objectivist doctrine, Hitchens said recently. If people really knew what is in Greenspan's mind, he could never be elected to anything: "he is too extreme," warned the author. In fact, Hitchens claims that it was his Objectivist mindset that led the Fed chairman to his first known involvement in criminal finance. KEATING SIX? In 1985, Greenspan, then a consulting economist in New York, took a $100,000 payoff from Charles Keating, owner of the Lincoln Savings and Loan thrift in Irvine, Calif. To earn his windfall, Greenspan certified that Keating was an upstanding, trustworthy, "seasoned and expert" banker, under whose praiseworthy management Lincoln had made "sound and profitable" direct investments. In fact, Keating was a hard-boiled swindler, who looted Lincoln Savings and went to prison for it, leaving the taxpayers to pick up a $3.8 billion loss. But Greenspan gave him a glowing bill of health, apart from his hefty honorarium, in part because Keating, a domineering, oracular crook, resembled John Galt, hero od Ayn Rand's most successful novel, Atlas Shrugged, Hitchens concluded. Some of the executive memoranda Keating wrote to the employees of Lincoln Savings have a truly Objectivist mindset. "They read as if they had been written by John Galt himself," said Hitchens, a student of Greenspan's career. In one of these directives, urging the sales staff to unload worthless junk bonds on credulous, elderly Lincoln thrift customers, Keating reminded them to spare no one. "Remember," Keating wrote, "that the weak, the meek and the ignorant are always good targets." "And so are, in Greenspan's world view, complacent American taxpayers," added Milinkovich. "We will never rid ourselves of the criminal financial elite headed by this Fed chairman until we take a hard-eyed look at who Greenspan really is, what he really believes in -- and what he is really doing to us."

Reprinted from www.libertylobby.org, home of The SPOTLIGHT archive

Greenspan: The Man Behind the Mask

Taxpayers Bear Brunt of Swindler's Schemes: A brief look at Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's checkered background sheds some light on the career of this shady financial mind.

By James Harrer

Is Alan Greenspan the capo di tutti capi -- the boss of all bosses?

More than a trillion dollars in criminal cash are washed through the world's financial institutions each year. At least half of it goes through major American banks such as Chase Manhattan, the Rockefeller dynasty's financial flagship. These megabanks become a "prime facilitator" of Large-scale money-laundering, a congressional investigation found this month.

Although the study, compiled by Democratic staffers of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, does not specifically make the point, it leaves the "inescapable conclusion" that under the lawless stewardship of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan the entire U.S. payments system has become "criminalized," said Dr. Aldo Milinkovich, a former senior Treasury examiner.

Paradoxically, the Senate report came to light as Greenspan was basking in the adulation of the Establishment media, where he was euligized as a miracle-working financial genius, the "Maestro" whose manipulative genius kept the U.S. economy soaring, as Robert Woodward, a celebrated Washington Post editor, put it in a recent book.

But even Woodward, a gushing admirer, admits in his book that the key difference between the Fed chairman and other central bankers may be that Greenspan was willing to do things that were "not legal."

But having let slip this crucial fact, Woodward offers no explanation for it.

His book takes little not of the Fed chairman's early years of economic apprenticeship or his ideological background.

CRIMINAL CONNECTIONS

Other researchers, however, have been not so reticent.

"Greenspan received his intellectual formation as a acolyte of the so-called 'Objectivist' movement headed by the late Ayn Rand in the '60s," noted author Christopher Hitchens.

It was a extremist Libertarian cult group the "exalted greed, ruthless profiteering, and taught harsh contempt for Christianity and any notion of treating others charitable," Hitchens recalled.

Moreover, behind that enigmatic demeanor, Greenspan still believes in the Objectivist doctrine, Hitchens said recently.

If people really knew what is in Greenspan's mind, he could never be elected to anything: "he is too extreme," warned the author.

In fact, Hitchens claims that it was his Objectivist mindset that led the Fed chairman to his first known involvement in criminal finance.

KEATING SIX?

In 1985, Greenspan, then a consulting economist in New York, took a $100,000 payoff from Charles Keating, owner of the Lincoln Savings and Loan thrift in Irvine, Calif.

To earn his windfall, Greenspan certified that Keating was an upstanding, trustworthy, "seasoned and expert" banker, under whose praiseworthy management Lincoln had made "sound and profitable" direct investments.

In fact, Keating was a hard-boiled swindler, who looted Lincoln Savings and went to prison for it, leaving the taxpayers to pick up a $3.8 billion loss.

But Greenspan gave him a glowing bill of health, apart from his hefty honorarium, in part because Keating, a domineering, oracular crook, resembled John Galt, hero od Ayn Rand's most successful novel, Atlas Shrugged, Hitchens concluded.

Some of the executive memoranda Keating wrote to the employees of Lincoln Savings have a truly Objectivist mindset.

"They read as if they had been written by John Galt himself," said Hitchens, a student of Greenspan's career.

In one of these directives, urging the sales staff to unload worthless junk bonds on credulous, elderly Lincoln thrift customers, Keating reminded them to spare no one. "Remember," Keating wrote, "that the weak, the meek and the ignorant are always good targets."

"And so are, in Greenspan's world view, complacent American taxpayers," added Milinkovich. "We will never rid ourselves of the criminal financial elite headed by this Fed chairman until we take a hard-eyed look at who Greenspan really is, what he really believes in -- and what he is really doing to us."