So, the Wall Street meltdown is IT's fault? Well, not exactly. But former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan told Congress last week that this "once-in-a-century tsunami" was aided by insufficient data. While Greenspan often praised computer technology as a tool that can be used to limit financial market risks, he told a congressional committee that the data that was fed into financial systems was often a case of "garbage in, garbage out."

The former Fed chairman said business decisions by financial firms were based on "the best insights of mathematicians and finance experts, supported by major advances in computer and communications technology." But he added, "The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year because the data inputted into the risk management models generally covered only the past two decades, a period of euphoria."

He said that if the risk models had been built to include "historic periods of stress, capital requirements would have been much higher and the financial world would be in far better shape today, in my judgment."

For more on IT's role in the meltdown:
- check out this Computerworld.com article

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