"I have no particular regrets. The housing bubble is not a reflection of what we did, as it is a global phenomenon.''

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz disagrees; he recently said the retired Fed chairman "really made a mess of all this." Bloomberg notes:

After the 2001 recession, the Fed cut its benchmark rate to a four-decade low of 1 percent. That move, along with a hands-off approach to regulation, has brought Greenspan under fire as the bursting of the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis threaten to sink the economy.

In an earlier story, Bloomberg reported on Greenspan's response to Stiglitz:

The U.S. home-price surge resulted mainly from the ``dramatic'' drop in rates on long-term fixed-rate mortgages, which itself resulted from the broader decline in long-term interest rates, Greenspan said. More than two dozen countries have experienced similar price surges and drops in long-term rates, Greenspan said.