Econ-Atrocity Bulletins

by Jonathan Teller-Elsberg, CPE Staff Economist

After eighteen years holding the reigns of power, Alan Greenspan has finally ended his career as chair of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve, as a result of legal limitations on the length of his term. As the person in charge of monetary policy in the U.S., Greenspan was, by some accounts, the single most powerful person in the world economy. His term as chair coincided with the early 1990s recession that contributed to George H. W. Bush’s loss to Bill Clinton; continued through the longest continuous period of economic growth in U.S. history; included the multi-billion dollar bailout of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund in 1998; persisted through the internet-inflated stock market boom and bust as the new century began; and has finished in the current period of feeble recovery.
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