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  Alan Greenspan, Through the Ages

unpublished Open Market Committee Notes finally released ...

  

 
 
 

   " In eight Tuesdays each year, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan convenes a small committee to set the short-term interest rate that can move through the American and world economies like an electric jolt. As much as any, the committee's actions determine the economic well-being of every American. The availability of money for business or consumer loans, mortgages, job creation and overall national economic growth flows from those decisions. "

 "Bob Woodward called his biography of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan Maestro for two reasons. First, Greenspan is a musician. He started out as a Julliard-trained jazz sax man. "He wasn't a good improviser," Woodward reports. And while the other guys got stoned all night, Greenspan "read economics and business books and eventually became the band's bookkeeper." He also cultivated powerful pals, like Ayn Rand, whose coterie dubbed the dour young man "The Undertaker."

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    March 25, 1997:: Greenspan fought another battle with his old nemesis, inflation, as the Federal Open Market Committee decided today to tighten money market conditions slightly, expecting the federal funds rate to rise 1/4 percentage point to around 5-1/2 percent.
     
    January 12, 1506:: Fearing a mass exodus in the market for indulgences, Friar Johann Tetzel begged Greenspan to lower the reserve ratio.  Greenspan was unavailable for comment.
     
    May 3, 1180: The number of kills, rapes, and villages burned reached a four-month high and Genghis Khan praised Greenspan’s policy today, “I think I speak for all of the Mongol Horde when I say that we have an immense respect for Greenspan’s clever shamanism and magic.  Although as nomadic raiders of the steppes we have little real need for a central banking system, we know that only he is wise enough to monitor important market indicators.”
     
    December 12, 45 BC: Almighty dictator Caesar leaned heavily today on Greenspan to keep interest rates stable in the expansionary economy.  Greenspan though, seeks a slowdown: “Although aqueduct construction and Coliseum revenues looked good in the first quarter, hyperinflation could take place as early as the Ides of March.”
     
    September 28, 1377 BC: Zeus finally transformed back from an ox into a human today as Greenspan hinted at an interest rate hike.  Greenspan cited Paris’ gift of a gold apple to Aphrodite as a decrease in the mortal population’s money supply.  The recent discovery of iron in the technology sector further complicated matters.
     
    March 18, Mesozoic Era: The dust clouds encircling the earth yet again did not dissipate today, following the impact on March 2 of a huge meteor.  43 species became extinct due to lack of sunlight today, up 2 species from yesterday.  In an effort to stabilize the economy and stave off an ice age, Greenspan lowered rates a full three quarters of a percentage point.  Advised Greenspan, “Investors should be looking towards long-term growth funds, particularly mammals.”
     
    Dawn of Time: In the beginning, there was only inflation…hyperinflation from a tiny, extremely valuable pinpoint of superdense matter.  And from that primeval fireball emerged Alan Greenspan, from which all good emanates.  His monetary policy drifted through the universe for billions and billions of years, until it coalesced to form planets and eventually solar systems.  Without his careful monitoring of interest rates and shrewd open market operations, the very fabric of space-time would be at any moment torn apart by the evil forces of inflation. 
     

    IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW MORE ...

     

    Back from the Brink: The Greenspan Years  by Steven K. Beckner. 

    Economic Puppetmasters: Lessons from the Halls of Power  by Lawrence B. Lindsey
    Greenspan : The Man Behind Money by Justin Martin. 

    The Greenspan Effect: Words That Move the World's Markets
    by David B. Sicilia, Jeffrey L. Cruikshank. 

     

    Maestro : Alan Greenspan's Fed and the American Economic Boom [LARGE PRINT]  by Bob Woodward.  (WHEN YOU NEED TO SEE IT IN BIG LETTTERS)

     

    Maestro : Alan Greenspan's Fed and the American Economic Boom [ABRIDGED] by Bob Woodward, 
    Maestro: Alan Greenspan's Fed and the American Economic Boom [ABRIDGED] by Bob Woodward, Tba. Audio CD 
    The Poetry of Alan Greenspan: Recorded Rather Painstakingly, But Nevertheless with an Adequate Regard for the Author's Central Thrust  by Rich Fontana.
    U.S. Government Leaders : Alan Greenspan-James Monre 309-622 (Magill's Choice) by Frank N. Magill(Editor).
    Back from the Brink : The Greenspan Years by Steven K. Beckner. 
    Global Risk Management by Ulrich Cartellieri, Alan Greenspan. 
    The Greenspan Variations : What We Talk About When We Talk About Alan by Rob Walker. 
    Greenspan's Taming of the Wave : Or a Golden Age Revisited by Francois-Xavier Chevallier. 

     

    The son of a stockbroker and himself a one-time swing-band musician, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has incontrovertibly turned his formerly anonymous presidential appointment into the single most dominant financial position on earth. Whenever he prepares to speak, fiscal agents around the world hold their collective breaths--and then react emphatically to his words, often even before he finishes saying them.

    But exactly what does he say that so affects money management? And precisely why does he say it? David Sicilia and Jeffrey Cruikshank, consultants and previous collaborators, do a formidable job of answering both questions by analyzing the chairman's own statements in The Greenspan Effect. The result is an insightful point-by-point assessment of the man and his enormous influence.

     

     

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