Alan Greenspan, longtime head of the US federal reserve, dies aged 100 – reports

Alan Greenspan, the influential economist who ​steered US ⁠monetary policy ⁠during ​his ‌five ‌terms as chair ‌of the Federal Reserve ‌under four presidents, ​has died aged 100, according to the Fed.

In a statement that she shared with NBC News, Andrea Mitchell – Greenspan’s wife and a correspondent of the network – said he died from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

“He will be remembered for his brilliance and his kindness,” Mitchell’s statement to NBC said. “Being his life partner was the joy of my life.”

Greenspan chaired the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, serving under the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.

He was widely credited with presiding over a period of growth and prosperity in the US while helming the Fed. But that ended when the country’s housing market collapsed, ushering in a devastating financial crisis that plunged the national economy into the worst recession since the 1930s and the Great Depression.

“More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve [chair] Alan Greenspan and others … had stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe,” concluded the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that investigated the collapse.

Greenspan later acknowledged having “made a mistake” in believing the US’s banks could effectively regulate themselves prior to the housing market’s collapse, which dealt a blow to his reputation.

But he defended himself against critics who sought to pin much of the blame for the US’s 2008 financial meltdown on him.

In his 2013 book The Map and the Territory, Greenspan argued that traditional economic forecasting was no match for the irrational risk-taking that can feed catastrophic price bubbles.

“Bubbles go up very slowly as euphoria builds,” Greenspan told the Associated Press in a 2013 interview. “Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that, I was sort of intellectually shocked.”

He earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in economics – all from New York University – before spending three decades running an economic consulting firm.

An avowed follower of Ayn Rand, when he was sworn in as the chief economic adviser of Gerald Ford in 1974, Greenspan had the libertarian philosopher stand by him.

Greenspan’s ensuing 18.5-year tenure as Fed chair was just five months from the being the longest such stint at the bank.

After his retirement, he kept himself busy into his 90s, including by writing a memoir along with two other books – as well as commentating on economic news on television.

In January, Greenspan joined fellow ex-Fed chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen in condemning what they called an “unprecedented” attempt by the Trump administration to weaken the independence of the US’s central bank. They did so after the justice department opened a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, who chaired the bank from 2018 to May.

Greenspan and the other former Fed chairs cautioned that similar prosecutorial attacks in other countries had produced “highly negative consequences” for the cost of living – and maintained that there was “no place” for them in the US.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting.