Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan dies at 100, leaving a legacy of growth and the seeds of the 2008 crisis

A giant of central banking passes

Alan Greenspan, who chaired the Federal Reserve from August 1987 to January 2006, died at his home on Monday at the age of 100. His wife, NBC News chief Washington correspondent Andrea Mitchell, said the cause was complications of Parkinson's disease. Greenspan's death closes the chapter on a career that made him, for a time, one of the most celebrated economic policymakers in American history.

The Maestro and the boom years

Greenspan took the helm of the Fed just two months before the Black Monday crash of 1987 and won early praise for his steady response. He then oversaw the second-longest expansion in US history: an uninterrupted decade of growth from March 1991 to March 2001. His prescient judgment that a mid-1990s productivity surge would keep inflation contained became a touchstone for central bankers. Former Fed chair Jerome Powell later cited that call as an example of how judgment can outperform technical models. Stock prices more than doubled during his tenure, earning him nicknames like 'Maestro' and 'Oracle'.

“If I seem particularly clear to you, you probably didn't hear me.”

Crisis management and the Greenspan put

Beyond the long expansion, Greenspan navigated a series of shocks: the 1990–91 recession, the Asian and Russian financial contagion of 1997–98, the dot‑com bust in 2000, and the economic fallout from the September 11, 2001 attacks. Along the way, he built a reputation as a Washington power player. However, his willingness to keep interest rates low and his hands‑off approach to regulation, rooted in a laissez‑faire philosophy shaped by his intellectual mentor Ayn Rand, gave rise to the so‑called 'Greenspan put', a belief that the Fed would always step in to support asset markets.

The unravelling and a tarnished legacy

Almost as soon as Greenspan retired in 2006, American housing prices began to slide. The collapse of the subprime mortgage market ignited a global financial crisis that pushed the banking system to the brink and triggered the worst recession since the 1930s. Critics pinned much of the blame on Greenspan's easy‑money policies and his faith in lightly supervised financial markets. Greenspan himself later told an official inquiry into the crisis:

“I was right 70% of the time, but I was wrong 30% of the time.”

A contested reputation and a modern echo

Former senior Fed official Stephen Oliner offered a more measured assessment.

“I think the deification that came just before the financial crisis was never really deserved, and I think the lambasting that he took after he left was never fully deserved either.”

Greenspan's free‑market ideas now find new admirers, including the newly installed Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who has pointed to artificial intelligence as a force that could allow low interest rates even amid surging demand.