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Alan Greenspan

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Alan Greenspan

The Modern Economist

Charter College

Christina Cruz

Abstract

Alan Greenspan a great Modern Economist was the second longest appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and served five intervals until 2006. He describes himself as a “long life Libertarian Republican." He now works as a private adviser and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC.

Alan Greenspan: The Modern Economist

Alan Greenspan the modern day economist born March 6, 1926 into a Jewish family. He helped the United States prolong the modern day recession, but still seen the collapse. He served on the Federal Reserve as the second longest term in four year intervals. He was first appointed as President Gerald Ford’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. The job of the Council of Economic Advisors was consulting the President of the United States on the welfare of the U.S. economy. Then in 1987 Alan was appointed as chairman of the Federal Reserve by Ronald Reagan and there he served until 2006.

As a child parents, Rose Goldsmith was a homemaker, and his father Herbert Greenspan was a stockbroker and a market analyst in New York City. While in high school at George Washington High school, Alan played the clarinet in a band named Woody Herman band, after graduating high school, Alan actually went to Juilliard School from 1943 to 1944. In 1945 Alan attended New York University where he earned his B.S. degree in economics summa cum laude in 1948 followed by his M.A degree in economics in 1950. By 1977, Alan earned his PhD degree in economics from New York University. He did attend Columbia University to purse advanced economics but dropped out before graduating.

During his years in college, Alan worked under a managing director at the Wall Street investment bank Brown Brothers Harriman, as the firm’s equity research department. Alan then began to work as an economic analyst at the National Industrial Conference Board in New York City. He worked there from 1955 to 1987 were he was president and chairman of Townsend’-Greenspan & Co., Inc. an economic consulting firm.

In 1987 Ronald Reagan appointed him chairman of the Federal Reserve. He also was director of the council on Foreign Relations foreign policy organization between 1982 and then in 1988, where he served as a member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty in 1984. Greenspan said following the 1987 Stock market crash that the Fed “affirmed today its readiness to serve as a source of liquidity to support the economic and financial system.”[1] Even Democratic President Bill Clinton consulted with Alan on economic matters, during Clinton’s 1993 deficit reduction program.

After the attacks of September 11, Greenspan led the Federal Reserve to initiate a series of interest cuts that brought down the Federal Funds Rate to 1% in 2004. Greenspan was quoted saying “It is not that human have become more greedy than past generations. It is that the avenues to express greed had grown so enormously.”[2], and suggested that financial markets need to be regulated. In 2004 George W. Bush appointed Greenspan on his fifth and final term of Chairman of the Federal Reserve member of the Board ended in January 2006 when Ben Bernanke was confirmed his successor. After leaving the Federal Reserve he formed an economic consulting firm Greenspan Associates, LLC. He also then accepted the honorary position at HM Treasury in the United Kingdom.

Alan Greenspan has received multiple honors including in 1976 John Heinz award for the Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, given to him by Jefferson Awards. He also received Commander of the Legion of Honour in France in 2005, Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the United Kingdom in 2002, Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. In 2004 he received the Dwight D Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and services, the first recipient of the Harry S. Truman Medal for Economic Policy, the inaugural Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Citizen Leadership and the honorary Doctor of Commercial Science. He also received the highest civilian award in the United States, by President George W. Bush in November 2005. Most recently in 2012 Greenspan received the Eugene J. Keogh Award for Distinguished Public Service from NYU.

Sources

• Greenspan : The man Behind Money

Martin, Justin (2000) Cambridge, MA

• Mastero: Greenspan’s Fed & the American Boom

Woodward, Bob (2006) New York, NY

• http://www.economist.com/node/5025627

• The Wall Street “ Little Alarm Shown at Fed Dawn of Housing Bust” Hilsenrath, Jon; Di Leo, Luca and Derby, Michael S (2013)

• The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World

Greenspan, Alan (2008) Penguin

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[1] Clarkson, Mark A brief History of the 1987 Stock market crash November 2006
[2] Greenspan, Alan Testimony of Alan Greenspan July 2006

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