Alan Greenspan, who led the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades and was widely seen as the most influential central banker of the modern era, died on June 22 at the age of 100. His wife, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, said the cause was complications from Parkinson's disease. In a tribute, she said he was “a giant who helped shape the U.S. economy for decades under presidents of both parties, but was always honest enough to acknowledge his mistakes.”
Greenspan served five terms as Fed chair, appointed by four different presidents, and wielded enormous influence from 1987 to 2006. Nicknamed “the Maestro,” he became almost mythic for steering the U.S. economy with small interest-rate moves and calming rattled global markets with carefully chosen words. During his tenure, the economy generally saw steady growth, low unemployment, and restrained inflation.
In 1996, he coined the famous phrase “irrational exuberance” while warning that asset prices may be getting too inflated. But after he retired, his legacy was sharply reassessed. Critics argued that much of the apparent prosperity of his years rested on bubbles, first in stocks in the 1990s and later in housing in the 2000s.
His low-rate policies and light-touch regulatory approach are also blamed by critics for helping create the subprime crisis and the market collapse of 2008. Greenspan later acknowledged error in an October 2008 congressional hearing, saying he had been wrong to assume companies, especially banks, would best protect their shareholders on their own. He added that something he had seen as a solid pillar of the free market had broken, and that it had shocked him.
