Alan Greenspan
a.k.a. Greenspan
An American economist who chaired the US Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, one of the longest runs in the job.
Alan Greenspan led the Federal Reserve through the 1987 stock crash, the 1990s boom and the dot-com bust. His words were so closely parsed that he became famous for speaking in deliberately foggy sentences.
His legacy is argued over. Admirers credit him with long, calm growth; critics say low rates in the early 2000s helped inflate the housing bubble that burst in 2008. The idea that the Fed would always cushion a market crash was nicknamed the 'Greenspan put', an ancestor of the Fed put.
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