Greenspan: The Man Behind Money

Alan Greenspan became chairman of the Federal Reserve a scant two months before the stock market crash of 1987. His deft handling of that crisis presaged his triumph in the 1990s, when he kept America from succumbing to the Asian financial flu, and received as much credit for the nation's booming economy as President Clinton. At appropriate points in this solid biography, former Fortune magazine staffer Justin Martin lucidly explains the intricacies of the financial system that Greenspan has dominated for 13 years. But the more fascinating revelations deal with the enigmatic Fed chairman's private life. Born in 1926, Greenspan was a Juilliard student and professional jazz musician before he entered New York University's School of Commerce in 1945. Novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand had a powerful influence on his economic thinking, and Greenspan spent 15 years as a member of her inner circle while he built a successful consulting practice. He made a few slips at the Fed, particularly when he failed to prevent the recession of 1990-91; but Martin shows him learning from his mistakes. Judicious quotes from interviews with colleagues and friends convey Greenspan's intriguing contradictions: aloof, yet collegial at work; deliberately obscure when testifying before Congress, but judged a fascinating conversationalist by the women he's dated, most of whom have been journalists. (He married NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell in 1997.) Is the secretive Chairman Greenspan secretly a media hound? In this instance, and many others, Martin's evenhanded portrait lays out opposing views and lets readers draw their own conclusions. --Wendy Smith