in June 2004, just a few months after he encouraged Americans to shun fixed-rate mortgages for adjustable-rate mortgages, Greenspan raised rates for what would be the first of seventeen consecutive times. He would raise rates at every FOMC meeting between June 2004 and the time he left office two years later, more than quadrupling interest rates, moving them from 1 percent to 4.5 percent. In other words, he first herded people into these risky mortgage deals and then, seemingly as a gift to the banks on his way out of town, spent two straight years jacking up rates to fatten the payments
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