Alan Greenspan
Long-serving chair of the Federal Reserve (1987–2006) whose tenure bridged the Great Moderation, the dot-com cycle, and the run-up to the financial crisis.
A former business consultant and Ayn Rand associate turned central banker, Greenspan embodied cautious gradualism on interest rates and strong confidence in markets’ self-correcting power—confidence later scrutinized after 2008.
His hearings and speeches often moved bond markets; retrospectively, critics tie light-touch supervision of mortgage innovation to systemic risk.
Why he appears in this narrative
Works such as “The Economist’s Hour” use figures like Greenspan to show how economists acquired public authority—and how hard it is to spot leverage and moral hazard in real time.