Greenspan sees housing bottom, criticizes bailout
WASHINGTON – Aug. 15, 2008 – Alan Greenspan usually surrounds his opinions with caveats and convoluted clauses. But ask his view of the government’s response to problems confronting mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and he offers one word: “Bad.” In a conversation this week, the former Federal Reserve chairman also said he expects that U.S. house prices, a key factor in the outlook for the economy and financial markets, will begin to stabilize in the first half of next year. “Home prices in the U.S. are likely to start to stabilize or touch bottom sometime in the first half of 2009,” he said in an interview. Tracing a jagged curve with his finger on a tabletop to underscore the difficulty in pinpointing the precise trough, he cautioned that even at a bottom, “prices could continue to drift lower through 2009 and beyond.” A long-time student of housing markets, Mr. Greenspan now works out of a well-windowed, oval-shaped office that is evidence of his fascination with the housi