Greenspan’s Death at 100 Reopens Blame for 2008 Crisis as Obituaries Recast ‘Maestro’ Legacy
Updated
Updated · Los Angeles Times · Jun 25
Greenspan’s Death at 100 Reopens Blame for 2008 Crisis as Obituaries Recast ‘Maestro’ Legacy
3 articles · Updated · Los Angeles Times · Jun 25
Summary
Obituaries after Alan Greenspan’s death at 100 have shifted from reverence to reassessment, tying his long Fed tenure to the credit excesses that fed the 2008 financial crash and Great Recession.
1987 marked the start of the so-called Greenspan put, when the Fed moved to steady markets after a 20.47% one-day stock plunge, reinforcing Wall Street’s belief that the central bank would cushion major losses.
That backstop, critics argue, encouraged risk-taking that resurfaced in episodes such as the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management collapse, which ended in a Fed-orchestrated $3.6 billion bailout.
Greenspan’s deregulatory worldview was rooted in his early ties to Ayn Rand and his faith in self-regulating markets, a belief he partly disavowed in 2008 when he told Congress he had found a flaw in that model.
The reassessment is not wholly negative: supporters still credit Greenspan’s 1982-83 Social Security commission work and his role in an era of low inflation and relative economic stability.