Barron’s reviews “Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B. Gonzalez Battles Alan Greenspan’s Bank.”
Greenspan, who left the Fed in 2006 but is still consulted as a genius, might find a metallic exoskeleton exceptionally comforting come May, when the University of Texas Press publishes an unflattering book by Robert Auerbach entitled Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B. Gonzalez Battles Alan Greenspan’s Bank.
Auerbach, a veteran Fed basher, portrays Greenspan as a real-life Professor Marvel — who, through double-talk or “garblement,” transformed himself into a mighty economic wizard àla Oz. Auerbach strongly implies that Greenspan’s 1977 Ph.D. from New York University was obtained in a few months with little more rigor than a matchbook-cover art degree and that Greenspan has kept his Ph.D. thesis secret in order to protect his vaunted academic reputation
Auerbach contends in his book that Greenspan’s invisible Ph.D. thesis is symbolic of a career marked by prevarication, cover-ups and a general aversion to making the Fed more publicly accountable.
I’ve never understood why Greenspan was held in such high regard, and always saw him as a garble-talking weasel who deliberately concealed his extremely reactionary political and financial agendas. Happily, the financial world is belatedly realizing he was a charlatan.
PS You knew Greenspan was an early acolyte of Ayn “Greed is Good” Rand, right?
George Orwell put it best, “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” (from “Politics and the English Language” at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm )
“I’ve never understood why Greenspan was held in such high regard” Hardly anyone understood Greenspan, period. A radio show, IIRC, “The Motley Fool,” even had a game where contestants tried to figure out what Greenspan was saying. They didn’t succeed that often.
Why was Greenspan so deliberately obtuse? Auerbach may give us more detail but Orwell hits the nail on the head. Now that we find that his economic boom has no clothes, let us not be too surprised that Greenspan the man is rather skimpily clad himself.