已阅2格林斯潘what went wrong.doc

Alan Greenspan: What Went Wrong Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, goes to a lot of parties. He and his wife, the TV journalist Andrea Mitchell, sort of get invited everywhere, he says, sitting in front of the long bay window in his office on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. Lately, though, cocktails鸡尾酒 and dinners seem to have guest lists drawn almost exclusively独有地 from one political party or the other. It used to be a ritualistic 例行公事的50-50 at parties -- the doyennes 前辈，地位最高的女子of culture and partying were very strict about bipartisanship两党的参与, he adds. That doesnt exist anymore. In his new book The Map and the Territory, （地图与疆域） to be released on Tuesday, Mr. Greenspan, 87, goes on a hunt for what has gone wrong in American politics and in the U.S. economy. He doesnt blame the current administration for todays partisan divide. The culprit罪魁祸首? Its the benefits, he says, pointing to the disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over how to deal with the growth of entitlements政府津贴制. In the book, he also ponders 思考why the Fed 美联储failed to predict the financial crisis, where he himself went wrong and how that discovery has completely changed his worldview. Mr. Greenspans biggest revelation came one day about a year ago when he was playing with gross domestic savings numbers国内总储蓄数据. What he found, to his surprise and initial skepticism怀疑主义, was that an increase in entitlements has closely corresponded to a decline in the countrys savings. We had this extraordinary increase in benefits, with each party trying to outbid出价高于 the other, he says. That practice has been eroding腐蚀、减弱 the countrys flow of savings thats so critical in financing our capital investment. The decline in savings has been partly offset 抵消by borrowing from abroad, which brings us to our current foreign debt: $5 trillion and counting, he says. He said he is baffled by all the blame that has been piled on him. Since the recession, critics have said the increase