The CBS '60 Minutes' interview with Mr Greenspan is scheduled for broadcast on Sunday at 7pm (2300 GMT) WASHINGTON - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he was late to see the storm gathering around US mortgage lending practices and commended his successor Ben Bernanke's handling of the crisis, saying he would likely be responding in a similar fashion.
'I think he is doing an excellent job,' Mr Greenspan said of Mr Bernanke in a television interview scheduled to air on Sunday.
Mr Greenspan was asked if he would lower interest rates as dramatically and quickly now as he did just ahead of, during and in the wake of the 2001 recession, according to excerpts of the CBS '60 Minutes' interview released on Thursday.
'I'm not sure that's true,' he said. 'We were dealing with an environment back then when inflation was easing. We could have acted without the fear of stoking inflationary pressures.'
'You can't do that anymore. ... I'm not sure I would have done anything different (if chairman today),' he added.
The comments from Mr Greenspan, who was tested early in his tenure by the October 1987 stock market crash, come as Mr Bernanke's skills are challenged by rising defaults in the US sub-prime mortgage market, which caters to risky borrowers, and a related global credit squeeze.
Mr Bernanke's Fed has come under fire from some quarters for not acknowledging quickly enough how deeply the current crisis could harm the economy or responding aggressively enough to keep the US expansion on track. Some analysts have speculated that Mr Greenspan would have acted more swiftly.
Mr Bernanke and his colleagues meet on Tuesday. They are widely expected to lower benchmark overnight interest rates, which the Fed has held at 5.25 per cent since June 2006, by at least a quarter-percentage point.
The Greenspan interview - on the No 1 US news program with an average 13.2 million viewers - is the first in a series of public appearances the former Fed chairman is making to publicise his memoir, 'The Age of Turbulence', which is being released on Monday.
The '60 Minutes' interview is scheduled for broadcast on Sunday at 7pm (2300 GMT). -- REUTERS
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