Finance and economics
The Greenspan legacy
MORE than ten years have elapsed since Alan Greenspan stepped down from the Federal Reserve; a decade that has not been kind to his reputation. Having just read Sebastian Mallaby's comprehensive biography*, "The Man Who Knew", it struck me that his career was a classic example of cognitive dissonance. (Read Martin Wolf's review of the book here.)
The main post-crisis criticism of Mr Greenspan was that he was a naive believer in market efficiency, failing to pop bubbles in the late 1990s or mid-2000s and failing to regulate the financial sector properly. He was, for a while, a disciple of the libertarian novelist, Ayn Rand.