Alan Greenspan, who has died aged 100, led a life tied in to the American success story. The son of Jewish immigrants, he first became a music student and a renowned jazz musician, before becoming an economist and eventually the 13th chairman of the US Federal Reserve, his name a byword for the steadiness of American economics. Greenspan, who turned 100 in March this year, was born in New York, the only child of a couple with Romanian and Hungarian Jewish backgrounds. His father, Herbert, or Herman, arrived in America from Romania in 1906, authorities registering him as Haim Grunspann. Rose Goldsmith, Greenspan’s mother, was from a Hungarian family. The couple divorced when Greenspan was a child, and he was brought up by Rose, who worked in a furniture store.
As a teenager, Greenspan showed prodigious musical talent and studied the clarinet at New York’s renowned Juilliard School of Music. He played in a band with Stan Getz, the legendary jazz saxophonist, before touring the country with the Henry Jerome Band. This peripatetic lifestyle, reportedly gave him “a valuable practical insight into the workings of US business”.
But Greenspan evidently had ambitions outside music. He began to study economics and busied himself in doing the band’s accounts while they were touring. Aged 19, he secured a place at New York University as an economics student. After graduation he found a job at JP Morgan as an economic consultant – where he eventually became a member of its board. Greenspan was rejected for military service in 1944 after his local draft board declared him medically unfit owing to a spot on his lung.
Greenspan worked on improving his economic career, climbing steadily up the ladder and becoming one of the country’s most trusted advisers. Greenspan pursued her belief that society functions most efficiently when people actively pursue their own self-interests, to the exclusion of the interests of society as a whole. In an article he wrote in 1966, he declared “the welfare state” was “nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society”. So it came as little surprise to commentators when in 1987 President Ronald Reagan first nominated Greenspan to the Federal Reserve.
But what was surprising was his reappointment, at successive four-year intervals, by different presidents. Greenspan only stepped down from his role in January, 2006, making him the second-longest-serving holder of the position after William McChesney Martin. But for 20 years, as Federal Reserve chair, Alan Greenspan was one of the most powerful men in the world, a trusted adviser to both Republicans – his natural home – and Democrats, such as President Bill Clinton.
His Jewish profile during those years was considered low. However, he is understood to have told Jewish communal leaders in 1980 that Reagan would be a better friend to Israel than President Jimmy Carter. He campaigned for Reagan and was ultimately rewarded with the plum role at the Federal Reserve. Greenspan is credited with forming America’s economic policy known as “easy-money” – but was criticised for the bursting of the “dotcom” bubble in 2008, two years after he left office. In comments made after he left the Fed, Greenspan, whose office boasted a large sign reading: “The buck starts here”, accepted some responsibility for the 2008 world economic crash. However, he argued that crash was not a result of low-interest short-term rates, the economic policy that was a signature part of his tenure, but rather a worldwide phenomenon caused by the progressive decline in long-term interest rates – a direct consequence of the relationship “between high savings rates in the developing world and its inverse in the developed world”.
Nevertheless, Greenspan did become the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories during his time in office. Prominent among these was the father of actor Mel Gibson, Hutton, who attacked Greenspan as the centre of his fantasies of “Jewish malign influence”.
What does seem to be true, however, is that Greenspan’s success as a prominent Jewish voice led to the environment in which Senator Joe Lieberman was named Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 2000.
Greenspan was married in 1997 to the Jewish NBC television anchor Andrea Mitchell. Their wedding ceremony was conducted by the then Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. A spokesman for the Genesis Prize, which makes awards to people for commitment to Jewish values, said Greenspan’s virtues exemplified Jewish values.
In a social media post, the Genesis statement said: “One of Greenspan’s guiding principles was a Jewish value of l’dor v’dor – from generation to generation: decisions made today should not mortgage our children’s future. Another was cheshbon hanefesh, or moral self-accounting. After the 2008 financial crisis, Greenspan publicly acknowledged where his assumptions had fallen short." Greenspan died from complications relating to Parkinson’s disease, said his wife. The couple had no children.
Alan Greenspan: born: March 6, 1926. Died: June 22, 2026
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