Aha

Alan Greenspan has been confusing the heck out of me by publicly endorsing Bush administration madness. Brad DeLong explains what's going on.

I am not terribly surprised that Greenspan has not been helpful ---- according to my lights of helpful --- on fiscal policy. For Alan Greenspan is three-faced. He is:

1. The superb monetary policy technocrat
2. The Randite --- the long-time disciple of Ayn Rand --- who believes that in a good society government spending would be less than 5% of GDP.
3. The Republican team player.

The Greenspan we saw for the most part in the 1990s was the superb monetary technocrat ...

A child of the '90s, I thought that #1 was really #1, and forgot that the other two were at least as important to him, if not more. I'll not make that mistake again.