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The Man Who Knew
Book

The Man Who Knew

The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan

Penguin Press, 2016 más...


Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Engaging
  • Insider's Take

Recommendation

Historian Sebastian Mallaby details Alan Greenspan’s life, from his days as a traveling jazz musician to his career as a researcher, consultant, government economic adviser and chair of the US Federal Reserve. Mallaby’s presentation of the time Greenspan spent atop the Washington, DC, power pile delivers a history lesson in macroeconomics, US politics and the remarkable period of the Great Moderation. Mallaby concludes that the former head of the US central bank could have acted differently to reduce the scope of the 2008 financial crisis but that his failings were understandable. He paints Greenspan as neither a “maestro” genius or a foolish ideologue, but as an unusually talented man who did his best, tried to learn from experience and, arguably, got far more things right than wrong. getAbstract believes you won’t want to skip a page of this fascinating, albeit hefty, biography.

Take-Aways

  • Alan Greenspan is an independent economic empiricist who loves analyzing data.
  • Though close to Ayn Rand in the 1960s, he became pragmatic and nonideological.
  • He was quick to see problems with postwar economics; he got many big questions right, including those dealing with inflation in the 1970s.

About the Author

Sebastian Mallaby is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for the Washington Post. He also wrote More Money Than God.     


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