Congratulations are due to Alan Greenspan, whose book still sits atop the Amazon
bestseller list, and which sold, the
WSJ says today, 129,000 copies in its first week. Or, to be precise, it
sold at least 129,000, and probably more like 172,000, since Nielsen
BookScan tracks about 75% of retail book sales in the US.
It seems, indeed, that Greenspan and his publishers are actually profiting
from the credit-market turmoil and the housing bust which may or may not be
the natural and disastrous consequences of Greenspan’s loose monetary policy.
If we were still in the middle of the Great Moderation, and the markets were
still awash in liquidity, I can’t imagine that Greenspan’s book would have got
nearly as much attention as it did.