Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, dies at 100

Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman who helped define the era of low inflation, market confidence and central-bank mystique, died at home Monday at 100. His death closes a long and still-contested chapter in U.S. economic history, one that stretched from the late Cold War through the rise of the digital age.

Andrea Mitchell, his wife of 29 years and an NBC News correspondent, said he died from complications of Parkinson’s disease. Greenspan led the Fed from Aug. 11, 1987, to Jan. 31, 2006, a stretch of nearly 19 years that made him one of the longest-serving chairs in the central bank’s history. He was nominated by Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, a rare political span that reflected his stature in Washington and on Wall Street.

Greenspan’s defenders credited him with helping guide the United States through a period often associated with the Great Moderation, when inflation eased and macroeconomic swings were less severe than in earlier decades. His Fed became synonymous with careful signaling and tightly managed language, a style so distinctive that “Fedspeak” entered the financial lexicon. Markets parsed his phrasing for clues, and one line in particular became part of economic lore: his 1996 warning about “irrational exuberance,” delivered in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

That reputation for foresight later collided with harsher judgment. After the 2007-08 global financial crisis, many economists and policymakers argued that the deregulatory instincts associated with his tenure helped create the conditions for disaster, especially by encouraging excess risk-taking in asset markets and finance. The argument remains central to how Greenspan is viewed today: as both the steward of a long boom and a figure whose policy philosophy may have left the system more fragile than it appeared.

Before he became a symbol of monetary power, Greenspan was a musician and a scholar. He was born in New York City in 1926, studied at Juilliard and played jazz saxophone and clarinet. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from New York University in 1948 and a master’s degree in 1950, and began doctoral work at Columbia University under Arthur F. Burns, who would himself become a Fed chairman. Greenspan’s life helped shape how presidents, investors and central bankers thought about interest rates, inflation and the role of government, and the debate over his legacy will outlast the man himself.