Michael Roberts: On the Death of Alan Greenspan

Greenspan and Ayn Rand

Michael Roberts

Alan Greenspan, the US Federal Reserve chair who dominated global markets in the late 20th century has died at the age of 100. 

 

He was heralded as the great guru of the credit-fuelled boom of the 1990s and 2000s, earning him the epithet “Maestro” in a hagiographic book by Watergate chronicler Bob Woodward in 2001. 

 

Greenspan was showered with accolades and honours thanks to the period of apparent stability over which he presided. Among them was an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II and the Presidential Medal of Freedom — America’s highest civilian award — which was bestowed on him in 2005 by George W Bush.

 

Greenspan was a disciple of the fascist intellectual Ayn Rand. Greenspan joined Rand's "Collective," a small group of friends and thinkers who would gather regularly at Rand's midtown Manhattan apartment to discuss politics, world events and ideas. He became a Collective regular. 

 

"Ayn Rand became a stabilizing force in my life," he wrote in his memoir. "She was a wholly original thinker, sharply analytical, strong-willed, highly principled, and very insistent on rationality as the highest value. In that regard, our values were congruent – we agreed on the importance of mathematics and intellectual rigor."

 

He advocated 'light touch' regulation of financial markets, also adopted by Britain's Gordon Brown and Ed Balls in the Labour government of the 2000s. But Greenspan's free market philosophy got sunk when the Global Financial Crisis broke in 2008. 

 

He admitted that he never saw it coming. As I wrote in my book, The Long Depression, Greenspan told the US Congress in October 2008 in the depths of the Great Recession, "I am in a state of shocked disbelief" It was a chance in one hundred year event, according to him.

 

So only once in one hundred years of his life - but not in the life of capitalism. 

Photo: Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand are pictured in the Oval Office on Sept. 4, 1974, after Greenspan's swearing in as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.