Some gossip about Alan Greenspan

From Thoughts on “Teaching Economics After the Crash” at medium.com by Karl Whelan, Professor of Economics at University College Dublin:

Greenspan’s “Model”
Alan Greenspan was not an academic. He was a consultant who leveraged his substantial Washington connections into an appointment as Fed chairman. And his positions on economics were very far from the mainstream.

I worked for Alan Greenspan from 1996 to 2002 and met him quite a few times. He is a man of many talents but it’s an understatement to say that his approach to economics was idiosyncratic. It was an interesting combination of obsessive analysis of high frequency economic data and extreme right-wing views picked up from his time as part of Ayn Rand’s “inner circle.” Hard to believe as it may be, the most powerful economist in the world held views that were very far from those taught in mainstream economics degrees.

 

From Is Yellen Starting a Civil War at the Fed? by Monetary Watch:

Greenspan more or less ruled the FOMC with an iron fist. As recounted by Frederick Sheehan in his book Panderer to Power, Greenspan himself controlled everything about the FOMC’s messaging and he drafted the FOMC statements that were to be issued after the meeting — without any input from the committee. Even Yellen herself, who had served on the committee in the 1990s, said being a Fed governor was “a great job, if you like to travel around the country reading speeches written by staff.”