Word: alan
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...Alan, it's all downhill from here, my friend...
...Well, Alan, all good things must come to an end. As the economy heads south, Greenspan will become the great goat of the recession. He got way too much credit for the good times, and he will get way too much blame for the bad times. In other words, Alan, the way up and the way down are the same...
...feature I used to occasionally write - called "Downhill from Here." The idea was that it was a portrait of some celebrity or public figure just a smidgen past the zenith of their fame, and how they were just about to start their descent. Bill Clinton is slaloming downhill fast; Alan Greenspan is about to start slouching toward the valley...
...reason we praise and blame with such vehemence is because of what sociologists call "correspondence bias," which is our tendency to attribute the cause of events to individual human actions. Thus, we say that Alan Greenspan spurred our prosperity when in fact it was a myriad of different circumstances almost all of which he had absolutely no control over. It is our tendency to believe Carlyle's wrong-headed Great Man theory of history, which is that great men make history, not that history makes great men - or women (he wrote in the 19th century). Our modern version of this...
...Thus, Alan Greenspan did not make our economic expansion, our economic expansion made Alan Greenspan. And as long as we were giddily expanding, so was Alan's reputation. But the minute the economy started to sputter, Greenspan started to get the blame. Some but not all of which he deserves...