Greenspan’s Full of Bad News

After the joblessness rate hit a 26-year high at 9.8 percent, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has predicted that unemployment will pass 10 percent before things start to improve. "This is an extraordinary period and temporary actions must be taken,” Greenspan said on This Week, advocating benefits such as tax credits for health insurance in order to “assuage the angst” of the increasing number of unemployed Americans. Greenspan differentiated these benefits from stimulus programs, and spoke out against the possibility of a second stimulus package in light of recent signs of economic improvement. Even so, Greenspan assessed Friday’s jobs report as “pretty awful,” warning that "people who are out of work for very protracted periods of time lose their skills eventually."