Mr. Greenspan (and our present-day economy) would have been better served had Mr. Greenspan heeded the lessons of William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” rather than being an acolyte of Ayn Rand’s “Fountainhead.”

K. J. Erickson

Minneapolis, Oct. 9, 2008

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To the Editor:

Alan Greenspan now says that the problem is the lack of integrity of those who bought and sold derivatives, not a problem with the product itself.

The real problem is that we believe in verification and oversight in almost every other realm of activity except, apparently, our investment markets. We require oversight of the safety of our pharmaceuticals, oversight of nuclear capability development worldwide, random audits of individual tax returns and covert surveillance of our potential adversaries.

Yet we gave the financial market a blank check. Do we really think those people are more moral and have more integrity than anyone else?

Anita Badrock

Chapel Hill, N.C., Oct. 9, 2008

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To the Editor:

You paraphrase Alan Greenspan’s viewpoint on derivatives as “not that the contracts failed” but that “the people using them got greedy.”

Mr. Greenspan’s anti-regulation stance sounds to me a lot like “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people” and makes as little sense. Daniel Heyman

Hartsdale, N.Y., Oct. 9, 2008

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To the Editor:

Re “U.S. May Take Ownership Stake in Banks to Ease Credit Crisis” (front page, Oct. 9):

There is a precedent for federal government ownership of equity in commercial banks. Since 1996, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, a very small unit within the Treasury Department, has used its authority to purchase stock in banks.

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The fund makes investments on a competitive basis into financial institutions certified as C.D.F.I.’s that primarily serve economically distressed markets. About 60 of the 800 or so certified C.D.F.I.’s are banks.

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When such investments are made in banks, it is in the form of nonvoting, but redeemable, shares. Selected banks often have to create a new category of equity to accommodate the Treasury limitations on its ownership.

The selected entities, including banks, use the investment to support the targeting of loans that stimulate economic activity. The certified banks are small; the largest has about $2 billion in assets, and most are much smaller than that.

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Up to now, the fund is the only government entity with an ownership, albeit noncontrolling, stake in commercial banks. Fredric C. Cooper

Silver Spring, Md., Oct. 9, 2008

The writer worked at the C.D.F.I. Fund from 1996 to 2003 and served as its deputy director for policy and programs.

To the Editor:

“A Fool’s Paradise,” by Bob Herbert (column, Oct. 7), is on the mark in proposing that the government address the problem of rising unemployment.

The financial aspects of the American economic fiasco get all the attention, rather than the real foundations of the economy.

The lessons of Keynesian economics have been taken over by ideologically driven theories that do not serve the country well. It seems clear that monetary policy is now rendered ineffectual because of the “liquidity trap” — confirmed by the absence of a favorable reaction to the Federal Reserve’s monetary expansion.

It is now time for the federal government to adopt a Keynesian fiscal policy, including a crash program to develop alternative sources of energy and grants to the states to finance infrastructure construction. Such an approach would be so much more effective in reducing unemployment than a policy of tax rebates, which, as the previous rebates demonstrated, get spent on imported goods and repayment of credit card debt without much effect on real economic activity. Peggy B. Musgrave

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Santa Cruz, Calif., Oct. 9, 2008

The writer is professor emerita of economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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To the Editor:

In “An Economy You Can Bank On” (Op-Ed, Oct. 10), Casey B. Mulligan asks, “How harmful would it be to wait nine more months for a new car or an addition to your house?”

I spoke to a local contractor on Tuesday who told me he had received four calls over the last two weeks from clients canceling scheduled renovations. These jobs would have kept him and his crew busy and employed through the spring of 2009.

With his current job coming to an end in a few weeks, he is scrambling to find work to fill the void.

So I suppose the answer to Professor Mulligan’s question will depend on whom you ask. Jeff Porter

Westport, Conn., Oct. 10, 2008