Alan Greenspan
Dies at 100

| published June 22, 2026 |

By R. Alan Clanton
Thursday Review editor

He was arguably the most powerful Federal Reserve Board chairman in the history of the United States, and one of the most influential shapers of economic policy among the capitalist world during the end of the previous century and the starting years of the new millennia.

Alan Greenspan died this week at the age of 100. His cause of death was attributed to complications from Parkinson’s disease, a condition with which he had suffered for several years.

The announcement of his death came first from his longtime wife, Andrea Mitchell, a journalist and chief Washington correspondent for NBC News.

In his role at the Federal Reserve, Greenspan presided over a remarkable period of economic stability and sustained growth—an 18-year tenure that meant working alongside five Presidents both Republican and Democratic. His enduring place in that chair resisted ouster largely through his seemingly uncanny ability to use only a few words to either rally markets and boost confidence when conditions seemed gloomy, or to calm markets worldwide when trouble erupted or when conditions became unstable.

Greenspan’s monetarist policies and surefooted guidance over those years were widely believed to have been instrumental in a long era of steady, sometimes robust, economic expansion—something that over time helped millions of Americans see their retirement savings increase, spending power rise, and consumer confidence swell, and home ownership grow to unprecedented levels.

But Greenspan is sometimes also seen as the author of the some of the pain which followed, when in the late aught years housing markets began a precipitous fall and the banking system of the U.S. seemed at risk of collapse. When the housing market bubble burst in 2008, it triggered a financial meltdown which impacted Wall Street and the banking system itself, threatening the stability of banks, mortgage institutions, and even insurance companies. That calamity also brought on a swift recession, one of the worst is U.S. history and arguably the most challenging economic downturn since the 1970s era of stagflation.

Close to power since the early 1970s, Greenspan had served almost every president since Richard Nixon, for whom he worked as an economic advisor. In 1975, President Gerald Ford was appointed Greenspan the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors (he replaced the outgoing Herbert Stein), and in 1987 President Ronald Reagan made Greenspan—then more-or-less aligned with Reagan’s free-market economic agenda—the 13th Governor of the Federal Reserve—in effect the most powerful voice among all banking in the United States.

Some criticized Greenspan’s occasional sluggishness, such as his limited response after the 1987 stock market crash, and his seemingly late conclusion that the housing boom in the U.S. was in fact already reaching bubble conditions. But in other instances he operated more forcefully, as when he advised President George W. Bush that for the sake of keeping oil prices steady, he agreed with those neocons that Saddam Hussein should be deposed. Greenspan was also a supporter of a direct response after 9/11, and for many of the same reasons.

Greenspan’s critics—both on the left and the right—have often argued that Greenspan promoted too many “easy-money” policies over the years, and in effect brought on many of the conditions which triggered several of the mini-recessions, among them the collapse of the so-called Millennial Stocks, the bursting of the Dot-Com bubble, and the so-called Emerging Markets downturn. One persistent complaint about Greenspan to this day is that he shaped a system too tolerant of debt, and one that encouraged Americans to enjoy consumption and fill parts of their dreams by borrowing, and by going deeper into debt.

But Greenspan’s supporters, who are many, still point out that under his central bank leadership the U.S. economy spent a significant amount of time in a steady upward climb, much to the benefit of most Americans, and certainly anyone who had been participating in a 401k in those years. Greenspan’s adherents also point out that it was Greenspan who was able to calm markets during those same micro-recessions and same periods of moderate downturn. It was often said of Greenspan that he could move markets or calm Wall Street simply by whispering in a President’s ear.

Arguably his most enduring historical legacy was his steady, calm response to the Wall Street crash of 1987, when, on October 19 the market fell almost 23 percent. Instead of the complex, 40-page document proposed by a team from the White House and several other regulatory agencies, Greenspan and New York Fed chief Gerald Corrigan, chose a simple statement: The Federal Reserve, consistent with its responsibilities as the nation’s central bank, affirmed today its readiness to serve as a source of liquidity to support the economic and financial system. It was one of the most famous instances where less was more, and by the end of the next week the markets had calmed and fears of a collapse of the banking system had faded.

Even in retrospect, Greenspan seems a paradox. He was at times a virtual libertarian, arguing for as little intervention in markets and in regulation as the system would tolerate, often extolling the self-interest mechanism of banks and financial companies which would, in his view, do the right thing since it was in their own interest. At other times he was a pragmatist willing to intervene when he felt it was the role of the Federal Reserve to guide markets or banks or lenders as a herd, especially when he sensed that intervention might avert larger problems. He was instrumental in the major overhaul of Social Security in 1983, which introduced the plan to slowly increase the retirement age so that program could remain solvent.

Greenspan drew intense criticism from the GOP when he closely aligned himself with President Clinton’s deficit reduction plans; he drew the ire of Democrats when he agreed to support President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.

Many business analysts suggest that it was Greenspan who was chiefly responsible for encouraging (or at least not discouraging) an ever-more-greedy lending industry to invite millions of Americans to buy homes they ultimately could not afford. These so-called subprime borrowers took on heavy debts they surely would never be able to repay, but Greenspan argued that the solid borrowers—along with the more conservative lenders—would buffer the economy by “distributing the risk.” But when the housing fabric did begin to unravel in late 2007—gathering speed in 2008—that spreading of the risk mattered little as markets collapsed, banks teetered on failure, and some insurance companies failed.

Greenspan himself acknowledged later that he miscalculated on this critical point. Speaking to a congressional committee in late 2008, he said “I made a mistake by presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.” In other words, Greenspan was counting on these companies to do what was best for their long-term endurance.

Beginning, notably, with Bear Stearns in April of 2008, dozens of companies went into rapid failure and bankruptcy, among them Countrywide Financial, the two federal financing institutions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Merrill Lynch (which was bought by Bank of America), and Lehman Brothers (which caused the immediate collapse of almost $1 billion in capital). Within days, some several major insurance companies also teetered on failure when the “risk” they had been paid to insure against all came tumbling in at more-or-less the same time.

Greenspan was born in 1926 in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. As a child, he had a knack for numbers and statistics that made him something of a savant. By his teen years he had also developed a strong interest and a striking talent for jazz music, in particular the clarinet and the saxophone. Greenspan was an serious reader and follower of the author and philosopher Ayn Rand, and in the 1950s he became a regular within her inner circle of friends and thinkers. In the 1960s some of his earliest writings appeared in Rand’s magazine The Objectivist.

Though they parted somewhat philosophically over the years, Rans and Greenspan remained close friends.

Through his central role in developing the 1983 plan to save Social Security from potential insolvency, Greenspan met an energetic, outgoing and sharp reporter named Andrea Mitchell, who worked for NBC News. Though they kept in touch for the next year, they would not become a couple until 1984. They waited until 1997 to get married.

News of his passing also brought a statement from the press office at the Federal Reserve, which notes its “deep sadness [at] the passing of Alan Greenspan.” The statement noted that “his contributions to monetary policy and economic thought left a lasting mark on this institution, on the broader field of economics, and on the country.”

“He brough rigorous analytical discipline to monetary policymaking,” the statement added, “and helped establish the credibility that remains one of the Federal Reserve’s most important assets.”



Related Thursday Review articles:

Good Deflation, Bad Deflation; By Thursday Review staff; January 28, 2015.

Who is to Blame for the Spirit Airline Debacle?; By Thursday Review staff; May 2, 2026.