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Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan dies at 100

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alan Greenspan, the jazz-playing U.S. Federal Reserve chair who was celebrated for engineering a decade of prosperity but later shared the blame for a devastating financial crisis, died Monday. He was 100.

Greenspan died from complications of Parkinson’s disease, said his wife of 29 years, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell.

“To me he was my husband, who shaped my life from our very first date in 1984,” Mitchell wrote. “He had ‘irrational exuberance’ for baseball, the Washington Commanders, tennis, golf, and music, especially jazz. He will be remembered for his brilliance and his kindness. Being his life partner was the joy of my life.”

The Fed said Greenspan helped to cement trust in the Fed during a time of economic uncertainty.

“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,” the central bank said in a statement Monday.

In 18.5 years at the Fed, Greenspan presided over a breathtaking surge in stock prices and a 10-year economic boom that started in March 1991. He was celebrated as “Maestro” and “Oracle” — an economic virtuoso whose every utterance was dissected for clues on where interest rates and the economy were headed.

The intense scrutiny of Greenspan’s intentions gave birth to new Fed folklore: the “Briefcase Indicator.” A stuffed briefcase carried into Fed meetings implied changes might be afoot because Greenspan carried with him charts and research to make his point.

But his reputation began to suffer almost as soon as he left the Fed in 2006. American housing prices tumbled rapidly, causing huge losses for banks that had repackaged mortgage loans into a dizzying array of complex securities. The growing financial crisis pushed the U.S. economy into the Great Recession of 2007-09 — the deepest downturn since the 1930s.

Critics blamed the devastation on Greenspan’s easy money policies and his support for deregulated financial markets. Greenspan himself later acknowledged “I made a mistake” in assuming that banks could essentially regulate themselves.

For almost two decades, it seemed that Greenspan could do no wrong. Not only in the United States but across the world, he was regarded with a mixture of reverence and awe. Many openly dreaded the day when he would leave the Fed.

Investors hung on his sometimes inscrutable observations. In the most well-known such remark, Greenspan sent financial markets reeling on Dec. 5, 1996, when he suggested with just two words — “irrational exuberance” — that stock prices were too high.

Greenspan was one of the few Fed chairs that Kevin Warsh, chosen by Trump to lead the Fed, praised at his swearing-in last month. Warsh has said one of his goals is to dial back the Fed’s communications, particularly the guidance it gives financial markets, an approach closer to Greenspan’s than to Warsh’s immediate predecessors as chair.

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