Subprime Tea Party

The cost of the credit crisis has been estimated to be as much as $1 trillion. The cost of having tea with the man who many blame for the credit crisis? $16,000 and rising.

Tea with Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, and his wife, Andrea Mitchell, the NBC correspondent is being auctioned to benefit the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, an human rights advocacy group. The highest bid today is $16,000.

The tea is titled "Tea and Subprime Sympathy," on the charity online auction site, CharityBuzz.com, so some one clearly has a sense of humor. The winning bid will be good for four people to have tea with the Greenspans at a mutually convenient sometime in the next year at the Four Seasons in Washington.

When breakfast or tea with Greenspan was offered last year, the bids started at $150 and quickly went to more than $31,000 in a couple of days and finished at $45,000.

There may be more competition this time around. A chance to appear in a Johnny Depp movie, Public Enemies, has a bid of $42,000 today.

Bidding ends on Wednesday.

by Jeffrey Cane