Republicans sure aren’t happy about some of the negative things being said about them by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in his new book, “Age of Turbulence.” But, after hearing an interview Greenspan did with NPR’s Robert Siegel, they may claim that he must be high on something:
Robert Siegel: “I think you’re one of the most senior high-ranking people whom I’ve ever read in their memoir talking about the people who were smoking pot when they were young, your fellow band member back in 1940-whatever this was , you’re living out there in the jazz age world, you were not drawn to that?”
Greenspan: “I never even smoked cigarettes, but I’ll tell you this to this day I can spot the smell of marijuana at 50 yards.”
And NPR Science Correspondent Robert Krulwich explained on NPR’s “The Bryant Park Project” how Greenspan used men’s underwear as an economic bellwether.
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“What he would do, is he would keep his ear as low to the ground trying to figure out – what are people really up to? Men’s underpants was the one that really got to me. He once told me that if you think about all the garments in the household, the garment that is most private is the male underpant, because nobody sees it except people like in the locker room, and who cares. Your children need clothes. Your wife needs clothes that have to change. The children grow. You need clothes on the outside. But, the last purchase that you don’t have to make is underpants. …If you look at the sales of men’s underpants, it’s just pretty much a flat line, it hardly ever changes. But on those few occasions where it dips, that means that men are so pinched that they are deciding not to replace underpants. And he said that is almost always a sort of foreshadow of ‘here comes trouble.’ …It’s not that he was right or wrong: I just loved the way he would sneak around human behavior by looking at things like that.”
