Days after receiving yet another Emmy, Jon Stewart interviews the former Fed head.

You've got to love Jon Stewart. (No, really, you've got to.) Only he has the wit, the smarts, and the cojones to ask Alan Greenspan fundamental questions on the subject of economics (that he doesn't really answer) on a comedy news show. Never mind his pointing out the obvious (that the existence of a Fed means this isn't really a "free" market). He also grills Greenspan on the fundamental agenda of economic overseers, asking who the managers of our economic system favor in their manipulation of the markets. Stewart notes that our system works on the principle of self-fulfilling prophecies, and "seems to favor investment, but [not] work." He contrasts the vast majority of people who work and put money in banks with the "whole other world" of investors who basically "play craps" with money and seem to be the ones ultimately favored by our economic system (because it's claimed that's what allows us to buy "bigger houses"). Greenspan ultimately responds that this end result is "the way it comes out but not the way we think about it." (Why not, one might ask...)

Greenspan dodges Stewart's questions (telling him to go back and read his new book) and claims that what the Fed does is to manage uncertainty in the economic world, claiming that the goal is to minimize risk. (Though this is contradicted by the very behavior of that other world, which strives to maximize risk so that return on investment is increased.) Ultimately, Greenspan tells us that economic forecasting hasn't improved worth a damn over the last fifty years that he's been involved in it, that all the advanced mathematical models aren't worth squat, and that just knowing whether people are euphoric or fearful (and knowing when that state of mind is about to change) would be the most effective measure of the state of the economy.