or maybe he quit because he couldnt do more to fix the problems. Bush has over 20 attempts to overhaul fannie and freddie. Greenspan does not control fannie and freddie does he? can he affect them indirectly?
On the other hand, greenspans's big failure was allowing credit default swaps to not have counter contracts and were not part of cboe regs ( you can go to cspan and listen to the house agricultural comittee hearings), an item which was specifically put into law under Clinton, so perhaps greenspan could have testified against it. I dont know if he did, but I think he did, but could not change it, and he certainly does not control legislation, so its not his failure alone.
naked shorting of credit default swaps has been the hole in the dike discussed in several house hearings on c span in the past three weeks. and this naked shorting of credit deafault swaps is what brought down the house of cards, since the swaps were directly linked to banks