Greenspan: I appreciate this opportunity to present the Federal Reserve’s Monetary Policy Report to the Congress.
English: It’s July. I should be golfing. But since you windbags dragged me here, what choice do I have?

Greenspan: With the adjustment of the capital stock to desired levels now evidently well advanced, business fixed investment may be set to improve.
English: Some suckers really got burned.

Greenspan: There are signs that the underlying disciplinary mechanisms that formed the framework for federal budget decisions over most of the past fifteen years have eroded.
English: We’re hosed.

Greenspan: The Administration and the Congress can make a valuable contribution to the prospects for the growth of the economy.
English: The Administration and the Congress can make a valuable contribution to the prospects for the growth of the economy, not.

Greenspan: Also contributing to the dispirited attitudes among many corporate executives is the intensely competitive business environment facing their firms.
English: The past couple of years have been a total bummer.

Greenspan: Lawyers, internal and external auditors, corporate boards, Wall Street all failed to detect and blow the whistle on those who breached the level of trust essential to well-functioning markets.
English: Some punks cooked the books.

Greenspan: As a result, the highly desirable spread of shareholding and options among business managers perversely created incentives to artificially inflate reported earnings in order to keep stock prices high and rising.
English: I mean they cooked the books big time.

Greenspan: An infectious greed seemed to grip much of our business community. Our historical guardians of financial information were overwhelmed.
English: Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo were like totally blown away.

Greenspan: To sum up…
English: I wanna get out of here. Could you try and keep your stupid questions to a minimum.