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Greenspan’s Ideological Slide: From Free Markets to Central Banking
With one of the longest tenures in Federal Reserve history, chairman Alan Greenspan presided over a largely flourishing economy, prompting the longtime nickname ‘Maestro’ and enduring through a rotation of six different presidents, a carousel of both democratic and republican personalities. Despite early acclaim as a financial prodigy of sorts, Greenspan’s overall legacy would not turn out to be so flattering.
Rigorously data-driven and cerebral, Greenspan had a penchant for market fundamentals and heavily relied upon the smooth scientism of economic models. Historically, he had been known for being a disciple of free-market ideology. His ideological origins had their roots in the vein of classical libertarianism espoused by the famous Ayn Rand. In his earlier years, Greenspan questioned the blundering interference of government in the economy and financial markets. His commitment to the notion of the self-correcting economy arguably reigned supreme over the entire span of his governmental career.
However, this stalwart belief in the self-correcting economy was interestingly juxtaposed with a seeming shift in Greenspan’s beliefs about market manipulation by means of the Federal Reserve. There is undoubtedly a glaring irony in Greenspan’s perch at the Fed considering his professed distaste for…
