Greenspan to Consult with PIMCO

Greenspan’s comments in speeches and meetings still carry weight–some reports pegged Greenspan’s remarks in February 2007, about the potential for recession in the U.S., as one of the factors for the February rout in global equities. The day after Greenspan’s remarks, the DJIA dropped 416 points, the S&P 500 off 3.5% and Chinese stocks in Shanghai were off 8.8%.

Though Greenspan’s remarks are still taken very seriously, he found time last fall at the Schwab IMPACT 2006 conference in Washington D.C., to poke fun at those who used to try to predict which way interest rates would be set, at meetings of the Federal Reserve, by watching how voluminous his briefcase was–it was, he said, simply a matter of whether his wife, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, had packed his lunch or not.