Better to admit his mistakes than never to. Nearly all government officials make mistakes. What fraction admit them? Whatever minuscule n% do, he's in the (100-n)th percentile.
The problem is, he hasn't actually admitted his biggest mistakes. As far as I know, he has never taken responsibility for the credit and housing bubbles.
There's little doubt his loose monetary policy contributed. That said, those bubbles could never have been as severe without wall street's catastrophicly optimistic pricing models and reckless lending practices. Wired has a good description of how pricing models contributed at http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?curr...
I suppose that it is a very small fraction of politicians that admit their mistakes because I did not believe Greenspan did. But after some googling, I have to concede that you are right he did actually admit his mistakes, in a congressional hearing no less. So maybe I should not have been that harsh on him.
Although it would have been nicer if he was more cautious while he was at the FED.
Oh, and thank you for reminding me of grad school entrance exams :).
