Over the weekend, we had a wide range of "Money Face-Off's" here on Bloggingstocks, and I brought you the face-off between Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke. In discussing Greenspan, I noted that one of the main ways a Fed Chief can stay in power for as long as he did was to keep his Presidents happy. Now that Greenspan is no longer under the thumb of President Bush, he obviously feels no such responsibility, and that is made evident in the harsh comments he has on the current President in his book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," due to be released today.

Even though the book was not scheduled to come out until today, the Associated Press got its hands on a copy over the weekend and quickly pointed out that the former Fed Chief has some pretty nasty things to say about our current President, as well as on the future of the economy in his much anticipated memoirs.

In his book, Greenspan said that the greatest frustration he had with President Bush was his consistent unwillingness to veto "out-of-control spending." Let's remember that Greenspan is a well-known Republican, so watching an administration ignore party doctrine and move away from small government principals has to hurt a bit, especially when that government is being led by another member of the Republican party.


He goes on to say that he is "chagrined" over the way Bush has transformed the Republican party. He says that under Bush's influence, the Republicans are now operating under the impression that "deficits don't matter." But Greenspan should be a little careful with the words he is throwing, because as we must remember, he was there too!

Let's go back in time a little bit to 2001. At that time President Bush was pushing hard for a $1.35 trillion tax cut over 10 years. At the time, budget "experts" predicted that this would result in a surplus of $5.6 trillion. This surplus has never materialized, or at least it hasn't to date (and no one is expecting to see said surplus, either.) But we have to remember one thing... a HUGE reason why the tax cut bill was able to slide through Congress was the backing of one man... you guessed it, Alan Greenspan himself.

Moving on to another sore subject, Greenspan also threw in his views on the current war in Iraq. It wasn't too long ago that if you had something bad to say about Iraq you were branded "unpatriotic" or "against the troops." I doubt anyone, no matter what you think of his policies, would ever consider Greenspan a non-patriot. His views on Iraq therefor are going to hurt some of you. In his book he came out and said exactly what all the war supporters have nightmares over admitting. In his words Greenspan states that "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil."

I have to agree with him on that. But in my view it wasn't really about taking the country's oil, it was about making sure that the country continued to sell its oil in dollars, and not Euros as it had recently started doing before the war started. You can read more on that on a post I wrote back in March of this year, "How important is oil to America?"

For me at least, when I think about the Federal Reserve I think of one basic thing: interest rates. After all, that is what the Federal Reserve was created to handle. It is a private group (sorry to disappoint any of you who still believe the Federal Reserve is a branch of the government) that controls the money flow in America. I won't even get into the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve -- that is for another day, and another post.

So what does Greenspan think the future holds in store for us in the form of interest rates? He is now predicting that in the upcoming years we wil be looking at double digit interest rates in order to fight off inflation. Don't be too surprised about this people --that is the eventual end of all forms of fiat money, its just a matter of when, not if, it will happen.

I could ramble on for hours on the Federal Reserve and fiat money, but I can't digress... so let's look at what Greenspan had to say about some of the other Presidents he served under:

• When talking about former President Bill Clinton, Greenspan says that the two of them enjoyed a very nice relationship. He says that Clinton was much like himself in that he loved searching out information, and the two were able to bond over this mutual intellectual curiosity.
• In regards to former President George H. W. Bush, Greenspan says that the economy was his Achilles' heel, and that resulted in a very poor relationship between the two men.

Definitely a book that is going to ruffle some feathers. Greenspan has definitely been willing to point the finger, but we will have to read the book for ourselves to see just how much of the blame he is willing to take himself.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last two years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer