Alan Greenspan Dies at 100

Whose Legacy Was Dimmed by the Financial Crisis. 

The ‘maestro’ rivaled the U.S. president for global influence. But his faith in financial markets’ ability to police themselves became an Achilles’ heel.

Former colleagues and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman hailed Greenspan as the greatest central banker of all time when he finished 18½ years as Federal Reserve chairman in 2006. 

Just two years later, the financial crisis triggered an austere reappraisal of his record. His view that markets could effectively police themselves became a driving force of regulatory policy in the 1990s and early 2000s.

His perceived inclination to stem market panic earned a moniker, the “Greenspan put”—as if the Fed itself was a put option that insured investors against losses. 

The Fed cushioned markets after the stock-market crash of 1987 and the 1998 failure of Long-Term Capital Management and played a key role arranging a bailout that followed the Mexican debt crisis of 1994.

Greenspan delighted in his ability to keep markets and politicians on their toes by wrapping his views in complex, garbled syntax. 

“I spend a substantial amount of my time endeavoring to fend off questions and worry terribly I might end up being too clear,” he joked in 1995. 

At one of his first hearings as Fed chairman in 1987. “If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.”

On the cover of Time magazine in 1999, the leading figure in what the magazine dubbed “The Committee to Save the World” after defusing financial crises in Asia and Russia.

Greenspan was appointed five times by four different presidents of both parties, including Bush’s son, President George W. Bush.

Greenspan believed financial institutions had a self interest in not taking risks that would wipe out shareholders; similarly, he thought they had natural incentives to behave ethically to preserve the value of their reputations. 

Under Greenspan’s watch, the Fed didn’t blow the whistle on riskier lending practices in which Wall Street used financial alchemy to turn dodgy mortgages into highly rated securities. 

Fed leaders and other regulators didn’t understand how risks had been distributed across the financial system by innovations such as the securitization of credit.

The former Fed leader tacitly acknowledged mistakes in a final appearance before Congress in October 2008. 

“Those of us who have looked to the self interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself especially, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he said.

Nick Timiraos Wall Street Journal June 22, 2026

https://www.wsj.com/economy/central-banking/alan-greenspan-fed-chair-dies-100-eeacb8eb

Alan Greenspan, the US Federal Reserve chair who dominated global markets in the late 20th century only to see his legacy tarnished by the financial crash

Financial Times 22 June 2026

https://www.ft.com/content/e26ebf11-2288-4913-96f3-001f6065755a?syn-25a6b1a6=1

As a writer I am in passionate support of large advances, but $8.5 million to tell the American people what he should have told them when his views might have had an impact?

Mr. Greenspan is an "If only they'd listened to me" man. He should have added, "And they might have if I'd been clear."

Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2007

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/05/peggy-noonan-1950s-and-alan-greenspan.html

”Jag är beredd att försvara honom. 

Det är lätt att titta i bakspegeln och säga att man borde varit mer försiktig”, säger SEB:s seniora ekonom Robert Bergqvist och fortsätter:

”Marknaderna utvecklades på ett sådant sätt att det helt enkelt inte gick att fortsätta med den typen av regleringar. De började läcka och marknaden hittade sätt att kringgå dem.”

”Vi som har litat på att kreditinstitutens egenintresse skulle skydda aktieägarnas kapital, inklusive jag själv, befinner oss i ett tillstånd av chockartad vantro”, sa Greenspan till lagstiftare 2008.

DI 22 juni 2026

https://www.di.se/nyheter/bedomare-om-greenspan-alskade-statistik/

Asset price bubbles and Central Bank Policy. This page is about Alan Greenspan

https://www.internetional.se/assetpricebubbles.htm

 

Räntan, John Maynard Keynes, Knut Wicksell och Greenspan

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2022/04/rantan-john-maynard-keynes-knut.html