Alan "Greedspan"

For those who haven't seen the CNBC David Faber documentary, "House of Cards" or the Frontline "Inside the Meltdown" produced by Michael Kirk, you need to.

Both programs take the time to explain in clear concise terms the undisputable facts of how the banking crisis occurred.

All the rest is just excuses and babble.

When one hears former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan matter-of-factly says, "...it wasn't that these people were dumb, they knew precisely what was going on, the vast majority of them thought that they knew when to get out. It was a failure of our best and brighest."

Then there was this exchange:

Faber: "These were not poor decisions, these were the worst decisions that financial executives have ever made. Greed runs through this."

Greeenspan: "Absolutely. And your going to pass legislation which is going to outlaw that? Try it.

Faber: "You still firmly believe in the power of free markets?"

Greenspan: "I firmly believe that because I know of nothing in the evidence of the alternatives."

This acceptance by Greenspan, who once admitted not understanding the complexities of the details of how high-risk bundled mortgages could receive triple AAA ratings by Moody's and other rating services speaks to the fundamental problems with an unregulated financial mechanisms.

The trillion-dollar mortgage business was one such mechanisms.

Court documents in the conviction of a Countrywide loan officer in Florida state that when one borrower could not afford a home because of inadequate income, a photo of the man standing in front of his sole proprieter business pickup truck was all the branch manager required to approve the high-risk loan.

Another borrower, a housekeeper, was given a $500,000 plus loan and told to get a couple of renters to live in the spare bedrooms to make the interest only payments.

There are millions of examples of this greed by loan officers, some of whom acting as "salesman" had no formal training.

When Greenspan sarcastically asks if we are going to "legislate that"(greed).

Perhaps we should take his challenge and "try it."