Brown’s reign of error

Gordon Brown doesn’t boast anymore about his friendship with Alan Greenspan – and little wonder. The former Fed Chairman’s name is fast becoming mud in America, as they turn on the man they lionised for more than a decade. America is about nine months ahead of the UK in the credit crunch, and what fascinates me is not just their take on the current situation but how they are revising their view of the last decade. What Greenspan called “prosperity” they now see as a debt binge and he is being blamed for fuelling the housing bubble now bursting with such calamitous consequences.

This should terrify Brown because the same charge will probably be applied to him. He was something of a Greenspan disciple – and was also lionised for what was then seen as prosperity and is now (as in America) seen as a bubble created by cheap debt and booming assets.