BOOKS

...In practice, however, Greenspan's insistence on agreement meant simply that everyone had better agree with the chairman...

...This conflating of the man, the institution, and the economy has produced what Martin and Woodward both call "the cult" of Alan Greenspan...

...Hardly a likely career track for the man who would be Fed chairman...

...Much like Greenspan's CEA colleagues years before, a frustrated Blinder soon left the Fed...

...The media focus is particularly ironic because Greenspan—long past his pity-the-poor-stockbroker gaffe—has become a master of misdirection...

...The topic gripped him...

...The cover line—as if we didn't get it—read "Greenspan to the rescue...

...Yet, as in the previous cases, Greenspan remains on patrol, slashing short-term interest rates again last month for the sixth time this year, seeking to keep the record 124month expansion—and his legacy— afloat...

...In this narrow sense, perhaps the current economic downturn is a good thing...

...democratic sensibilities, yet Greenspan's reputation and power are such that many politicians and reporters consider his obfuscations normal, charming, even amusing...

...According to Martin, a former staff writer for Fortune, Greenspan's early years in Depression-era New York gave few inklings of the path his life would take...

...Indeed, as he once told Congress, "I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant...

...This practice soon bred resentment among Greenspan's high-level staffers, some of whom resigned...

...For instance, after a June 1995 press conference on the state of the economy, news interpretations diverged wildly...

...His famous "irrational exuberance" speech of 1996, in which he overtly (and unsuccessfully) tried to talk down the buoyant stock market, proved the exception rather than the rule...

...Yet Greenspan also displayed some shrewd politicking at the CEA...

...Yet economics held early sway with Greenspan...

...Rescues have been a matter of course for Greenspan during his nearly fourteen years at the helm of the Federal Reserve...

...During set breaks," Martin writes, "he started reading treatises on economics borrowed from the public library...

...When a critical institution like the Federal Reserve is so identified with a single individual, how might financial markets react to a different hand at the helm, particularly when the inevitable economic crisis hits our shores...

...Bob Woodward's Maestro picks up the story here, recounting the politics behind the Greenspan Fed...

...Greenspan reveled in the confusion...

...By contrast, the current slowdown in the U.S...

...Indeed, the political and media obsession with Greenspan makes the notion of a different chairman appear ridiculous...

...Recession Is Unlikely, Greenspan Concludes," declared the Washington Post...

...Carlos Lozada is the associate editor o/Foreign Policy magazine in Washington, D.C...

...Greenspan's role in guiding the U.S...

...What happens after Greenspan...

...cliches aside, Maestro effectively demonstrates Greenspan's ability to overshadow an institution with the force of his personality once again— and lead the media astray in the process...

...economic boom of the 1990s...

...During a time of high inflation and unemployment, the neophyte chairman soon revealed his political naivete...

...If you really wanted to examine who percentagewise is hurt the most in their incomes," Greenspan argued, "it is the Wall Street brokers...

...financial system...

...And in late 1998, the near collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, a major U.S...

...There will be life after Greenspan...

...Greenspan's tendency to put himself before his institution would reemerge in the years to come...

...I mean their incomes have gone down the most...

...He'd put his worst foot forward," Martin explains, "the bionic accountant, numbers-over-emotions aspect of his personality...

...This performance, along with his strong Republican ties and his wellknown mastery of obscure economic data, made him an easy choice to replace Paul Volcker as Fed chairman in August 1987...

...Greenspan Sees Chance of Recession" deduced the New York Times...

...Running counter to institutional tradition, whereby the top three CEA economists were essentially equals who divided up the plum duties, Greenspan "jealously guarded the most attractive and high-visibility assignments" and quietly made himself personally indispensable to Ford...

...The occasional independentminded Fed officials who dared challenge Greenspan—such as Clinton appointee and Princeton luminary Alan Blinder, who in the mid-1990s had the audacity to question Greenspan's rate hikes—found themselves frozen out of the policy-making process...

...It was a lesson Greenspan would not forget...

...Columbia professor Arthur Burns instilled in Greenspan a deep distrust of government intervention in economic affairs, as did novelist and freemarket proselytizer Ayn Rand, whom Greenspan first met in his late twenties...

...Predictably, Woodward laces the narrative with an intensely Beltway sensibility, deploying A-list dinner-party scenes and dropping curse words in high places to establish the book's insider bona fides...

...economy has transformed the chairman into the rarest of creatures: the celebrity economist, his every enigmatic statement endlessly parsed by a Greenspan-obsessed press...

...Now, as if to certify the chairman's icon status, these two biographies promise insight into the man lurking behind the retro eyewear and the tortured econspeak...

...Although he showed a knack for numbers early on, Greenspan's first love was music...

...The public outcry was as fierce as it was predictable, and Greenspan later apologized for his remarks before Congress...

...Consensus, he argued, would ensure the credibility and effectiveness of the group's policy decisions...

...Writing for Rand's The Objectivist newsletter in the 1960s, Greenspan condemned consumer-protection and antitrust laws and even questioned his future employer's independence, Commonweal 25 July 13,2001 decrying the Fed as "government sponsored, controlled, and supported...

...Commonweal 27 July 13,2001...

...I was a pretty good amateur musician," Greenspan recalled years later, "but I was average as a professional....So I decided that, if that was as far as I could go, I was in the wrong profession...

...BOOKS Oracle at the Fed Carlos Lozada On the cover of their April 21 issue, the editors of The Economist featured a ripped, buff, Baywatchesque Alan Greenspan plunging through knee-deep seawater in a bathing suit and tank top, with a life buoy in hand and a whistle dangling around his neck...

...He also reminded FOMC members of their awesome responsibility: "If it ever gets to Commonweal 26 July 13,2001 the point where this committee is either in disarray or perceived to be in disarray, there is no other institution in this government that can substitute for us...

...As chair of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)—the group of highranking officials in charge of setting interest-rate policy—Greenspan frequently invoked the need for the committee to appear unified before the financial markets...

...At New York University and Columbia, Greenspan honed his economics skills and earned a reputation as a tireless data hound...

...The October 1987 Wall Street crash hit a scant two months after his appointment to the Fed...

...economy might rank as a bit of a yawner...

...By puncturing the mythology of Alan Greenspan and revealing his inability to rush to the rescue every time, the prospect of a successor—inevitable as it is daunting—may not seem so frightening...

...More often, Woodward explains, Greenspan practices what he calls "constructive ambiguity...

...In 1981-83, Greenspan gained prominence when he successfully chaired a bipartisan blue-ribbon commission that provided recommendations on how to forestall a crisis in the Social Security system...

...His control firmly established, Greenspan became synonymous with the Federal Reserve and, at the same time, the undisputed symbol of the U.S...

...hedge fund, endangered the entire U.S...

...After several years running a successful economic consulting firm in New York, Greenspan pvit his free-market thinking to work for the government...

...However, its D.C...

...These works portray an aloof, reserved man driven by free-market ideology but perhaps even more by a keen eye for political advancement and self-preservation...

...The decision to embrace economics full-time was vintage Greenspan, the product of a clear-eyed, cost-benefit analysis...

...The notion of any other public servant deliberately leading Congress, the media, and the public astray would seem anathema to U.S...

...Will irrational gloom take hold...

...Painstakingly researched and telling a story that is spread over the course of Greenspan's life, Justin Martin's Greenspan offers a more comprehensive account than Bob Woodward's Maestro, which dwells mainly on Greenspan's years with the Fed...

...At a conference examining the impact of inflation on income security, Greenspan defended the fledgling Ford administration against charges that its policies hurt the poor...

...Over time, few questioned his authority...

...During the 1990s, Mexico, Asia, Russia, and Brazil all suffered major financial crises that threatened the United States...

...He played the clarinet in his high school orchestra and, after a year at Julliard, in 1944 the eighteen-year-old Greenspan joined a swing band, earning $62 a week playing gigs from the Catskills to New Orleans...

...At the prodding of Burns, Greenspan joined Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign as a domestic-policy advisor and, six years later, he accepted the chairmanship of the president's Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), being sworn in just hours before Nixon's resignation...

...The cult of Greenspan raises obvious questions that neither author addresses satisfactorily: Is there a danger in depending on Greenspan too much...