Green-speak

Transcript excerpts from CNBC "Greenspan: Power. Money & the American Dream"
Martin Mayer (link to Amazon for his book "The Fed":

My own transcription from DVR of the show:
"I use to go and watch him testify before the House and Senate Banking Committees, which are not among the intellectual leadership groups of the United States, and about half of these guys would ask really dumb questions, I thought what could he do?
But he would convert the question into something to which you could give an intelligent answer which backed the positions that he’d taken, at the Fed itself."

Congress lacks IQ?
They play to the camera?
I'm shocked, simply shocked...

Mayer's comments were followed by this exchange:

Maria:

"I remember watching some of the hearings, and you testifying and one of the congressmen would say “look I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
I remember one where you rolled your eyes and thought, yeah I know you don’t understand what I’m talking about. Should people have been more studied about these issues, should they have known, and do you think some of these guys were attacking you because they really didn’t understand the issues?"

Greenspan:

"No, you gotta remember that, in large part, ah, for a lot of the Congressmen and Senators, you’re a prop.
Because the cameras that matter are not the National cameras, but the home town cameras, and so that what you get is a… shots of their asking the question, very few shots of the answer."

Therefore we have "Green-speak" aka nonsense
From the CNBC website:

"MARIA BARTIROMO: 
All of these important economic events you are overseeing the most important institution, and leading things. And then not only are you dealing with these crises, but then you've got to convey what's going on to people. That means Congress, the president, the media, the public. So what? You come up with Green speak.

ALAN GREENSPAN:
Otherwise known as known as Fed speak.

MARIA BARTIROMO:
What is it?

ALAN GREENSPAN:

"It's a-- a language of purposeful obfuscation to avoid certain questions coming up, which you know you can't answer, and saying-- "I will not answer or basically no comment is, in fact, an answer." So, you end up with when, say, a Congressman asks you a question, and don't wanna say, "No comment," or "I won't answer," or something like that. So, I proceed with four or five sentences which get increasingly obscure. The Congressman thinks I answered the question and goes onto the next one."