Alan Greenspan, the influential economist who steered US monetary policy during his five terms as chair of the Federal Reserve under four presidents, has died aged 100.
The central bank said its former chair “helped establish the credibility that remains one of the Federal Reserve’s most important assets” in a statement on Monday that announced Greenspan’s death.
In a separate statement that she shared with NBC News, Andrea Mitchell – Greenspan’s wife and a correspondent of the network – said he died from complications of Parkinson’s disease. “He will be remembered for his brilliance and his kindness,” Mitchell’s statement to NBC said.
Greenspan chaired the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, serving under the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.
He was widely credited with presiding over a period of growth and prosperity in the US while helming the Fed under three Republicans and a Democrat, gaining bipartisan political support in the process.
But the country’s housing market collapsed shortly after he left office, ushering in a devastating financial crisis that plunged the national economy into the worst recession since the 1930s and the Great Depression – and prompting a re-evaluation of his legacy.
“More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve [chair] Alan Greenspan and others … had stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe,” concluded the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that investigated the collapse.
Greenspan later acknowledged having “made a mistake” in believing US banks could effectively regulate themselves before the housing market’s collapse, which dealt a blow to his reputation as an economic “oracle” or “maestro”.
But he defended himself against critics who sought to pin much of the blame for the US’s 2008 financial meltdown on him.
In his 2013 book The Map and the Territory, Greenspan argued that traditional economic forecasting was no match for the irrational risk-taking that can feed catastrophic price bubbles. “Bubbles go up very slowly as euphoria builds,” Greenspan told the Associated Press in a 2013 interview. “Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that, I was sort of intellectually shocked.”
He earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in economics – all from New York University – before spending three decades running an economic consulting firm.
Greenspan’s tenure of 18 and a half years as Fed chair was just five months from the being the longest such stint at the bank. Only William McChesney Martin, who led the central bank from 1951 to 1970, served in the post for a longer period.
After his retirement, Greenspan kept himself busy into his 90s, including by writing a memoir along with two other books – as well as commentating on economic news on television.
In January, he joined fellow ex-Fed chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen in condemning what they called an “unprecedented” attempt by Donald Trump’s presidential administration to weaken the independence of the US’s central bank. They did so after the Department of Justice opened a controversial criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, who chaired the bank from 2018 to May, and has been a target of Trump’s ire.
Greenspan and the other former Fed chairs cautioned that similar prosecutorial attacks in other countries had produced “highly negative consequences” for the cost of living – and maintained that there was “no place” for them in the US. (The investigation was later dropped.)
After announcing his death at their home on Monday, Mitchell praised Greenspan as “a giant of a man who helped shape the US economy for decades under presidents of both parties, but was always honest in acknowledging his mistakes”.
Mitchell’s tribute to Greenspan also said that he “shaped my life from our very first date in 1984”.
Alluding to a phrase Greenspan once famously used to describe how overly optimistic investors could fuel economic bubbles, Mitchell added that her late husband “had ‘irrational exuberance’ for baseball, the Washington Commanders [football team], tennis, golf and music, especially jazz.
“Being his life partner was the joy of my life.”
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting
