Alan Greenspan, Fed Chairman for 18 Years, Dies at 100

Alan Greenspan, who led the Federal Reserve for 18 years under four presidents, died Monday at his home at the age of 100, his wife, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell, said in a statement. The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, according to CBS News and CNBC.

President Ronald Reagan appointed Greenspan chairman in 1987, and he served under George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush until retiring in 2006. His tenure was the second longest in the Fed’s history, four months shorter than that of William McChesney Martin, who presided from 1951 to 1970, CNBC reported. Born in New York on March 6, 1926, the son of a stockbroker, Greenspan studied clarinet at Juilliard, played in a jazz band and earned economics degrees at New York University, according to CNBC and CBS. CBS reported that he advised Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign and chaired Gerald Ford’s Council of Economic Advisers before taking the Fed job.

His time at the central bank coincided with what economists call the Great Moderation, a period from the mid-1980s to 2007 of low inflation, rising stock prices and steady growth, CBS reported. It also included shocks, among them the 1987 stock market crash and the dot-com collapse. In a televised speech on Dec. 5, 1996, he asked how the Fed could know when “irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values,” a remark that markets read as a warning; Tokyo stocks fell 3 percent, CNBC reported. He became known for deliberately opaque testimony, which he later described to CNBC as “a language of purposeful obfuscation,” and he also pushed the Fed toward greater openness about its decisions, CBS reported.

Ben Bernanke, his successor, said Greenspan “was a great central banker who helped lead his country through almost two decades of prosperity,” and John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said his legacy “continues to inspire generations of central bankers.” Mitchell called him “a giant of a man who helped shape the U.S. economy for decades under presidents of both parties, but was always honest in acknowledging his mistakes.”

His record remains disputed. Both CBS and CNBC noted that his low-interest-rate policies are sometimes cited as a contributor to the housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis, although the collapse came after he left office. CBS quoted a 2017 Economist essay saying the main criticism was that he was a believer in market efficiency who failed to pop bubbles or properly regulate finance. Greenspan defended himself in 2007 as the victim of “revisionist history,” saying he had warned about subprime mortgages, and in 2008 told Congress he had been mistaken in believing big banks would lend prudently, CBS reported.

The Fed said in a statement Monday that it noted his passing “with deep sadness” and that his contributions to monetary policy “left a lasting mark on this institution.” He married Mitchell in 1997, CBS reported.