Alan Greenspan Dies: Longtime Federal Reserve Chairman Was 100

Alan Greenspan, who led the Federal Reserve under four presidents, steering the economy through unprecedented growth but also unnerving crisis, has died. He was 100.

Greenspan’s wife, NBC News chief Washington correspondent and chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell, said in a statement that he died at their home on Monday morning from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

“He was a giant of a man who helped shape the U.S. economy for decades under presidents of both parties, but was always honest in acknowledging his mistakes,” Mitchell said. “To me he was my husband, who shaped my life from our very first date in 1984. He had ‘irrational exuberance’ for baseball, the Washington Commanders, tennis, gold and music, especially jazz. He will be remembered for his brillaince and his kindness. Being his life partner was the joy of my life.”

Greenspan served as Federal Reserve chairman from 1987 to 2006. The stock market crashed just a few months into his tenure, and it was followed several years later by a recession that sank the reelection prospects of George H.W. Bush. But Greenspan’s tenure included the technology boom of the 1990s, followed by the dot com bust in 2000 and the shock of the attacks on 9/11 the next year.

The Federal Reserve’s steadfast period of low interest rates in the 2000s was criticized as contributing to a housing bubble in the 2000s, followed by the mortgage crisis of 2007 and the Great Recession the following year.

A congressional report in 2011 cited a number of factors as contributing to the collapse, including the Federal Reserve’s “pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages, which it could have done by setting prudent mortgage-lending standards.” They also pointed to the failure of federal regulators to act and lack of regulation around derivatives, among other causes.

Greenspan told Congress in 2008, “The consequent surge in global demand for U.S. subprime securities by banks, hedge and pension funds, supported by unrealistically positive rating designations by credit agencies, was, in my judgment, the core of the problem.”

He used the phrase “irrational exuberance” in a 1996 speech, a warning that stocks had become inflated, but the words have since been applied elsewhere whenever there are fears of a bubble in sectors of the economy.

The Federal Reserve, now chaired by Kevin Warsh, said in a statement, “During his 18 years as Chairman, he guided the Federal Reserve through periods of significant economic expansion as well as periods of considerable stress. Under his leadership, the Federal Reserve achieved a sustained era of price stability that supported economic growth and helped anchor the public’s confidence in the institution.”

Greenspan was born on March 6, 1926 in New York City. He studied economics at Columbia University, a student of Arthur Burns, who would later become Fed chairman. After a stint with the National Industrial Conference Board, Greenspan served as president of Townsend-Greenspan & Co., the economic consulting firm. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under Gerald Ford and, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, served on his economic policy adviser board.

When Greenspan was sworn in to his post in the Ford administration, he was joined by Ayn Rand, the philosopher and author whose libertarian approach and laissez-faire economics was a huge influence on his career. “I was intellectually limited until I met her,” he wrote in his 2007 memoir, per NBC News.

Greenspan married Mitchell in 1997, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiating, and Barbara Walters and Henry Kissinger among the guests. Per Time, the Ginsburg and Mitchell met in the early 1980s, when she interviewed him when he was a member of a Social Security commission.