Don't Mourn This Man | Rick Perlstein | TMR

Alan Greenspan was a dedicated acolyte of Ayn Rand, the philosopher of selfishness. This ideological foundation shaped his belief that showing compassion or regulating markets was detrimental to civilization, leading to policies that prioritized capital over labor and rejected oversight.

Greenspan was part of Ayn Rand's cult; his appointment ceremony included Rand herself. His later statements and actions, like dismissing the need for fraud laws, reflect this radical free-market perspective.

The Federal Reserve, under Greenspan and his predecessor Paul Volcker, actively used monetary policy to control the economy, not just inflation, but also to prevent workers from gaining too much leverage. This shifted the balance of power significantly towards capital.

Paul Volcker induced a massive recession under Jimmy Carter to change the balance of power between labor and capital. Greenspan continued this by explicitly linking 'worker insecurity' to inflation control, preventing wage growth.

Greenspan was elevated to a god-like status by media elites, exemplified by Bob Woodward's book 'Maestro.' This veneration created an environment where criticism was almost impossible, allowing his radical policies to proceed largely unchallenged until the catastrophic consequences became undeniable.

Bob Woodward's book 'Maestro' (2000) portrayed Greenspan as a 'strong and trusted parent,' a 'god-like Olympian,' whose words were 'telling the truth,' and where 'hardly anybody can muster the courage to criticize him anymore.'

Despite clear warnings from regulators like Brooksley Born about the risks of unregulated derivatives, Greenspan vehemently opposed any oversight. He believed that fraud was economically irrational and that the market would self-correct, a belief that proved disastrous.

In 1996, Brooksley Born, head of futures regulation, warned about unregulated derivatives. Greenspan 'went ballistic,' telling her, 'I guess you and I will never agree about fraud. You think there should be laws against it.' Senator Graham later made it illegal to regulate them.

Greenspan's policy responses directly led to a succession of financial bubbles. After the dot-com bubble burst, his decision to lower interest rates to near zero created an environment where investors sought new avenues, leading to the subprime mortgage and housing bubble that ultimately triggered the 2008 crisis.

The dot-com bubble destroyed $4.5 trillion in wealth by 2000. Greenspan responded by lowering interest rates to zero, causing investment banks to invent bundled subprime mortgages, leading to the 2008 global economic collapse seven years later.

In a rare moment of public accountability, Greenspan admitted to Congress in 2008 that his long-held belief in the self-correcting nature of markets was flawed. This admission came after decades of adhering to an ideology that ignored systemic risks.

Testifying before Congress in 2008, Greenspan stated, 'Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders equity, myself especially, are in a state of shocked disbelief.' He admitted to finding 'a flaw in the reality in the model that I perceived.'