Alan Greenspan
From RationalWiki
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Alan Greenspan was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1987 to 2006, having been first appointed by Ronald Reagan. Well known for his free market ideology, (essentially, libertarian in nature), his fiscal policy saw both economic boom and bust scenarios. Under his tenure at the Federal Reserve, Greenspan drove through market deregulation that directly resulted in the banking crisis. In 2008, when testifying to the US Congress, Greenspan admitted that his free market views were mistaken, saying “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”
Greenspan was a disciple of Ayn Rand, first meeting her in the 1950s and remaining a close associate until her death in 1982. He was a member of Rand's inner circle while she wrote Atlas Shrugged, while she attended his swearing-in ceremony as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in 1974. On his admission in 2008 that his free market views were flawed, Rand's followers turned on him.
He advocated that the United States invade Iraq for the "security of our oil supplies"[1] and helped print money to fund a trillion dollar war. Never mind that most of the increases in the price of oil in the 21st century are directly attributable to the easy fiscal and monetary policy of the Federal Reserve and the US government (see price of oil compared to price of gold, or that even if Saddam Hussein had tried to destroy Iraq's oil supplies, he would have been only be able to destroy a negligible amount of them[2]. According to Alan Greenspan, the war in Iraq somehow made sense because of oil.
His policies also worsened the "dot-com" bubble and undermined the economy in other places.
Greenspan is married to television reporter Andrea Mitchell.
