As everybody already knows, Alan Greenspan had nothing — absolutely nothing, I tell you — to do with fostering the housing bubble (and, therefore, the meltdown of the economy).

But just in case there’s someone out there who still nurses irrationally lingering doubts, Greenspan presents yet another argument in his defense (in the WSJ, this time; that’s the same piece of prime journalistic real estate that showcased Karl Rove‘s inability to do elementary arithmetic last week):

… it was indeed lower interest rates that spawned the speculative euphoria. However, the interest rate that mattered was not the federal-funds rate, but the rate on long-term, fixed-rate mortgages.

And the Fed only controls the federal-funds rate. The rate on long-term, fixed-rate mortgages is set by some mysterious Economic Council of Hokery-Pokery.