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Alan Greenspan, Longtime Fed Chair and Ayn Rand Disciple, Meets Ultimate ‘Invisible Hand’
"For decades, he preached that the self-interest of the predator was the invisible hand of the common good," Yanis Varoufakis said after the man who led the US central bank under four presidents died aged 100.
Jun 22, 2026
Alan Greenspan, whose policies during nearly 20 years as US Federal Reserve chair fueled soaring economic inequality and helped create the conditions for multiple economic crashes, died Monday at age 100 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.
While many corporate media outlets published hagiographic obituaries lionizing the "Maestro" who presided over nearly two decades of low inflation, rising stock prices, and American economic confidence, critics focused on Greenspan's role in promoting dangerous deregulation and "easy money" policies that inflated financial bubbles, with sometimes disastrous results.
Robert Reich—who served as US labor secretary under President Bill Clinton during all of Greenspan's tenure—called him "in many ways the most powerful person in America" during that era.
"If any single person was responsible for the financial crisis of 2008, it was Greenspan."
"He maintained an iron grip over the Fed, and almost single-handedly decided on interest rates," Reich wrote. "He essentially fired George H. W. Bush by raising interest rates so high (ostensibly to ward off the inflation then threatening the economy) that the economy took a dive, and voters blamed Bush. This was enough to convince my boss, Bill Clinton, to do exactly what Greenspan wanted—which was to reduce the federal budget deficit and thereby destroy much of the agenda Clinton ran on (and I helped create)."
"I don’t want to speak ill of anyone who has passed. Greenspan was an extremely charming, intelligent, and thoughtful man," Reich added. "But the truth must be told: If any single person was responsible for the financial crisis of 2008, it was Greenspan. That crisis—the worst collapse since 1929, which led to the worst recession in decades, in which millions of Americans lost their jobs, savings, and even their homes—resulted from the deregulation of Wall Street that Greenspan advocated."
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis wrote on X: "His epitaph? A singular, glorious confession, 'I found a flaw in my model of the world.' A flaw, he said, as though it were a leaky pipe, not a total collapse of the intellectual architecture that anointed him Oracle. For decades, he preached that the self-interest of the predator was the invisible hand of the common good.
"Then, in 2008, the beast devoured the table, and to his credit, he blinked, admitting that his entire worldview—the one that central bankers canonized and the world swallowed—was a fairy tale for rentiers," Varoufakis added. "He did not, of course, admit to culpability. That would require a moral compass, a device notably absent from his Ayn Randian toolbelt. No, he merely noted the flaw, as a meteorologist might note a gust of wind, and returned to his well-earned silence."
Born 10 miles from Wall Street in Manhattan's Washington Heights during one of the most infamous economic bubbles of all time, Greenspan was a protégé of libertarian writer and philosopher Ayn Rand and was influenced by the Atlas Shrugged author's moral defense of capitalism, her fierce advocacy of deregulation, and her insidious insistence that self-interest was socially beneficial.
Their relationship cooled as Greenspan embraced more mainstream economic policies despised by Rand and gradually became a leading steward of the very sort of state-shepherded system she deeply distrusted.
After heading President Gerald Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, Greenspan was appointed chair of the Fed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. He would remain in the post well into George W. Bush's second term.
Greenspan generally favored low interest rates, especially after crises like the 1987 stock market crash, the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management crisis, and the 2001 recession. His fame grew after he suggested that the economy might be experiencing a tech-driven “productivity miracle," language that many investors took as validation that traditional valuation limits were obsolete.
Critics would later call it a "productivity mirage."
Staunch devotion to low interest rates by Greenspan's Fed boosted stock prices and real estate values under "easy money" policies. Many investors came to believe that the Fed would intervene aggressively whenever markets fell sharply—the so-called "Greenspan Put."
However, since ownership of financial assets (and the firms that sell and promote them) is concentrated among the wealthy, it was the rich who benefited most from Greenspan's polices. When bubbles burst, as they did after the dot-com boom that ended in early 2000 and during the 2008 global financial crisis, the rich bounced back thanks to their diversified portfolios and bailouts, while middle- and lower-income households were wiped out through asset devaluation, foreclosures, and job losses.
"It is no exaggeration to say the global financial crisis of 2008 had an enormous and lasting impact on American life and the way ordinary people view elites," New York Times global economic correspondent Peter S. Goodman said on social media. "It is also no exaggeration to say that Alan Greenspan has as much responsibility for the crisis as an individual can."
"For those not old enough to remember, it is difficult to state his aura during his time of greatest influence," Goodman continued. "When he told Americans that they should buy houses and use variable-rate mortgages to do it, they listened. Much is made of his econ jargon-laden vernacular that went over the heads of nearly all listeners."
"That was central to the mystique," he added. "When he went to the Hill and spoke to Congress, most people had no idea what he was talking about but assumed that smarter kids did. And so his quasi-religious faith in the efficiency of markets as the ultimate insurance against risk went unchallenged and became dogma, and the risks kept building."
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The Democratic Party Has a History Problem
Party leadership needs to study and learn from what the Wall Street wing has cost in terms of lost elections and the increasing tilt of the playing field.
May 28, 2026
In his stumbling explanation of the muddled autopsy report on the 2024 election debacle, Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin uttered two pieces of wisdom that regrettably, neither he nor the party has heeded: “The Democratic brand is in trouble and needs repair,” and “I agree with folks who have said we have to learn from the past to win the future.” Had they followed that advice, they would have seen how history tells a neglected and important story.
It begins when Bill Clinton was handed the keys to the White House by a group of largely Southern officials who formed the New Democrats with the mission of putting a Southern, pro-business candidate in the White House. With its pointed references to Reagan speeches and policies, Clinton’s Second Inaugural signaled a devil’s bargain that ended a century of Democratic Party policies.
In 1896, William Jennings Bryan had articulated the level playing field principles that served as the Democrats’ North Star for much of the last century: “There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.” In the term following his inaugural rejection of those principles, Clinton repealed one of the crown jewels of the New Deal, the Glass-Steagall Act regulating banks, and handed social media the gift of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, exempting them from the rules governing print and broadcasting.
In the years since Bill Clinton left the White House for a comfortable retirement, the New Democrats asserted control of the party, courting big donors with the pro-Wall Street policies resembling those of his second term. Their strategy uncannily mirrored that of Donald Trump’s Republicans by offering positions on social issues that appeased elements of the base while supporting economic policies benefiting corporate America. In their fight for the soul of the party, the New Democrats pulled no punches, blocking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and primarying 2026 opponents with the zeal of Donald Trump.
One lesson history teaches us is that if inequalities are allowed to fester, things can get very ugly.
Their biggest failure may be that in abandoning the level playing field principle, the New Democrats offered no substitute, save triangulation. Today most of us would stumble over trying to define the Democratic Party in one sentence, but one can easily do that for the Republicans—less taxes, less government. With the midterms six months away, this lack of a unified message already has the faithful worried.
The historical data missing from the autopsy and Martin’s explanations tells the story of what the ascension of the Wall Street Democrats has cost their party and the country. Since 2000, the Democrats have controlled the House only 4 out of 15 terms and the Senate only 6 out of 15. For only four years have Democrats held a majority of state governerships. Democratic presidential victories were anomalies. Barack Obama benefited from a record turnout of BIPOC voters. Joe Biden won because of the mishandling of Covid-19. Even allowing for gerrymandering and voter suppression, it appears clear that the Democratic Party has been in decline for some time.
Given the pro-Wall Street leanings of both parties, we should not be surprised that we have essentially been governed by a minority. Since 2000, the winning presidential candidate has only averaged 30.18% of the voting-eligible population. Today, only 27% of voters identify with either party, while 45% identify as independents. That is the lowest total ever for Democrats.
The numbers in various data and reports tell how the tilt of the playing field continues to widen. Although real total wealth has tripled since 1989, the share of the top 10% has increased from 63% to 72%, but the bottom 50% saw their share decline from 4% to 2%. Meanwhile, labor’s share of production has declined ominously. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, it fell from 64% in 2001 to 56% in 2023. During most of the 1950s and 60s it hovered around 60%.
Business concentration recalls the trusts that sparked such widespread discontent during the late 19th century. The best figures come from a study by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Small Business that was mothballed after its release in December 2023—and goes unmentioned in the autopsy. Bristling with footnotes, the eye-opening Report on Competition in the Small Business Economy cites a Boston Federal Reserve study that shows the economy is 50% more concentrated today than in 2005. It goes on to state, “The dramatic increase in income and wealth inequality seen over the past four decades in the US can also be largely attributed to higher levels of concentration across industries.” Sounding like an outraged 1890 Farmers’ Alliance tract, the study paints a grim picture of today’s farmers: “From the seeds they plant, to the fertilizer in the soil to the machinery that allows them to make it all happen at scale, the price they pay at every step is at the whim of a handful of companies.”
Faced with similar conditions during the Gilded Age, discontented workers and farmers organized to press for the Sherman, Interstate Commerce, and Safety Appliance Acts; laid the groundwork for the 16th, 17th, and 19th amendments; initiated bureaus of labor statistics and factory inspections; and enhanced access to higher education. Because they feared both parties were the tools of tycoons, the discontented also formed new parties, of which the Greenbackers and Populists are the most notable. Most of all, in a flurry of civic engagement, they founded groups like the Grange, Knights of Labor, Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, and Farmers’ Alliance.
Whether today’s discontent will have a similar impact remains an open question. A good part of the answer will depend on whether people like Ken Martin continue to support the Wall Street wing of the party or realize what that support has cost in terms of lost elections and the increasing tilt of the playing field. What is clear is that the drastically tilted playing field has become extremely volatile. One lesson history teaches us is that if inequalities are allowed to fester, things can get very ugly. During the discontent of the Gilded Age, lynchings averaged 150 per year between 1881 and 1900, or one every 2.4 days. Another 1,400 people perished in riots, in the most violent three decades in our history. All of us can see and fear the growling, anvil-shaped clouds that threaten to darken our lives, as they did over a century ago.
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Profiles in Cowardice: Our 4 Ex-Presidents Still Won't Speak Out Against Trump!
These former presidents should mobilize the citizenry from the grassroots to the Capitol and take on the unpopular Tyrant Trump; instead, they are living luxurious lives and are largely AWOL.
Mar 28, 2026
What should the American people, especially the hundreds of millions of their voters, expect Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden to do against the vicious, serial law-violating, violent, corrupt, agency-dismantling Donald Trump and the crony Trumpsters who are wrecking our government and our economy?
These former presidents should mobilize the citizenry from the grassroots to the Capitol and take on the unpopular Tyrant Trump. Having sworn to uphold the Constitution and “…take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” they should strongly uphold their patriotic duty to resist tyranny and save our Republic and our besieged democratic institutions, and stop the assault on our civil liberties and civil rights.
Our former presidents all get along with each other. They have the stature to:
- Get mass media;
- Raise immediately large amounts of funds for strong IMPEACH TRUMP citizen groups in every congressional district to increase and expand the present majority of Americans wanting to FIRE TRUMP;
- Stay the course as Trump keeps worsening his criminal dictatorship and destruction of our democracy; and
- Highlight the many programs they initiated that Trump has illegally destroyed or is dismantling.
Instead, they are living luxurious lives and are largely AWOL from connecting with the existing but overwhelmed civic opposition to Trump. Bush is painting landscapes as Trump has destroyed his AIDS program in Africa, and the Bush wing of the Republican Party. Obama has campaigned for Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill as governors of Virginia and New Jersey, satirizing Trump in some of his speeches. His present passion, however, is the March Madness basketball championships. Clinton has left it up to Hillary, who wrote a guarded New York Times op-ed back on March 28, 2025, taking Trump to task for jeopardizing our national security and not “preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries.”
Then there is Joe Biden, who received then President-elect Trump and Melania on the morning of January 20, 2025, with the gracious “welcome home.” In return, Biden got that afternoon and every day since hundreds of foul epithets from Trump, scapegoating him for almost everything he could fabricate, including solar energy and wind power projects. Delaware Joe managed a few critical replies at a Democratic Party dinner in Nebraska on November 7, 2025. “Trump has taken a wrecking ball not only to the people’s house but to the Constitution, to the rule of law, to our very democracy.” Unfortunately, Biden has mostly been silent.
Credit these retired presidents with knowing the historic dangers and existing damages of the TRUMP DUMP in Washington and around the country. They also know their supporters would be very receptive to their organized, persistent leadership from them to send Trump back to Mar-a-Lago. Why are they AWOL?
First, they fear Trump’s retaliation, upsetting their comfortable lives. Trump is now deep in the QUICKSAND of the Middle East. He is being pilloried by a million stickers at gas pumps picturing Trump pointing to the booming price per gallon and saying, “I did that.” He is openly declaring there should be no elections in November and continues to send or keep his storm troopers in America’s cities. An expanding police state is not exactly a credible perch for effective profanity. Show a modest bit of moxie!
A second excuse is that they have done some of what Trump is doing:
- Bush’s mass murder in the illegal war on Iraq.
- Clinton’s distracting raids abroad against innocents and his womanizing.
- Obama’s “signature strikes,” killing over 300 mostly young men in places like Yemen.
- Biden’s illegal co-belligerence with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza, which has taken over 600,000 civilian lives.
True enough. But people live in the present and are most worried about what Dangerous Donald is doing NOW to their livelihoods, freedoms, health and safety, and the consequences in casualties and their tax dollars of another endless war.
Our former presidents have no excuses. They simply lack a modicum of courage. Remember Aristotle declared, “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”
The current political climate demands the powerful emergence of the four previous presidents of our country. The federal district courts are ruling heavily against Trump’s “Injustice Department,” though Trump retains a slightly weakening claim on six Supreme Court Injustices. People of all backgrounds are marching and demonstrating in huge numbers. This weekend, the “No Kings” rallies (he’s already a dictator) anticipate 10 million people nationwide.
The business community, particularly small businesses, are feeling serious harm from Trump’s tariffs, wars, cancelled contracts, and inflationary policies. The labor unions have never been under such attack (notably the federal employees’ union members whose contracts he has torn up), and they are simmering with anger. The universities are also under His illegal shakedown attacks.
What explains the mainstream media’s virtual ignoring of this ABDICATION by these ex-presidents? The reporters mostly despise Trump, who has slandered them (calling them “deranged and demented” for starters) and has extortionately sued news organizations and journalists for millions of dollars and coerced settlements.
The media have reported that some ex-agency officials under the former presidents have excoriated Trump, such as Samantha Power, for closing the major lifesaving Agency for International Development. The formidable Rohit Chopra, who directed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Biden, is not reticent to verbally defend his nearly closed-down agency, which had saved consumers many billions of dollars.
However, they are not covering the abdication by BIG GUYS—our former presidents. I have tried in vain to find out why by calling reporters and editors. Maybe you’ll have better luck. Try calling these numbers: The Washington Post: 202-334-6000; The New York Times: 800-698-4637; Associated Press: 212-621-1500; NPR: 202-513-2000; The Wall Street Journal: 212-416-2000.
You may break through and help save our Republic!
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