I recently came across this great (and prophetic) Murray Rothbard piece on Alan Greenspan from way back in 1987, the year Greenspan was first appointed as Chairman of the Fed.
I found particularly remarkable the recent statements in the press that Greenspan’s economic consulting firm of Townsend-Greenspan might go under, because it turns out that what the firm really sells is not its econometric forecasting models, or its famous numbers, but Greenspan himself, and his gift for saying absolutely nothing at great length and in rococo syntax with no clear-cut position of any kind.
Ha ha!
Greenspan’s real qualification is that he can be trusted never to rock the establishment’s boat. He has long positioned himself in the very middle of the economic spectrum. He is, like most other long-time Republican economists, a conservative Keynesian, which in these days is almost indistinguishable from the liberal Keynesians in the Democratic camp. In fact, his views are virtually the same as Paul Volcker, also a conservative Keynesian. Which means that he wants moderate deficits and tax increases, and will loudly worry about inflation as he pours on increases in the money supply.
There is one thing, however, that makes Greenspan unique, and that sets him off from his Establishment buddies. And that is that he is a follower of Ayn Rand, and therefore “philosophically” believes in laissez-faire and even the gold standard. But as the New York Times and other important media hastened to assure us, Alan only believes in laissez-faire “on the high philosophical level.” In practice, in the policies he advocates, he is a centrist like everyone else because he is a “pragmatist.”
As an alleged “laissez-faire pragmatist,” at no time in his prominent twenty-year career in politics has he ever advocated anything that even remotely smacks of laissez-faire, or even any approach toward it. For Greenspan, laissez-faire is not a lodestar, a standard, and a guide by which to set one’s course; instead, it is simply a curiosity kept in the closet, totally divorced from his concrete policy conclusions.
… Yes, the Establishment has good reason to sleep soundly with Greenspan at our monetary helm. And as icing on the cake, they know that Greenspan’s “philosophical” Randianism will undoubtedly fool many free market advocates into thinking that a champion of their cause now perches high in the seats of power.
Unfortunately, Greenspan’s groundless self-identification as a libertarian has also given anti-market polemicists some useful ammo for discrediting free-market economics. Jake Weisberg, of course, took that ball and ran with it in his asinine Slate piece, in which Greenspan is portrayed as some kind of rampaging anti-state ideologue. (Weisberg also somehow forgot to mention monetary policy anywhere in his piece. Curious!)
Here’s a memo to anyone else who is planning on destroying the world economy: Please do not call yourself a libertarian, especially if you’re not one! I’m looking at you, Bernanke.
