Abstract

Retire Father Greenspan

The author argues that, as chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan has done the bidding of the financial industry while suppressing wage growth for most Americans. Alan Greenspan is well loved among the governing elites and seldom criticized, because he convincingly plays the role of America's Dr. Pangloss. When the occasional upset occurs, the wise Federal Reserve chairman comes forward to reassure the citizenry: Not to worry, we are still living in the best of all possible worlds. Father Greenspan has been taking a victory lap these past few months, declaiming cheerfully on these and other matters, basking in the glow of his seventeen-year tenure. The President recently nominated Greenspan for another term as Fed chairman--his last, presumably--and the Senate's reconfirmation hearing will likely resemble Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Greenspan made himself the living embodiment of the conservative market orthodoxy that still reigns over conventional opinion, despite its spectacular failures. For most of his tenure, in pursuit of reducing inflation further, Greenspan held back economic growth in order to maintain an artificial surplus of labor--higher unemployment that guaranteed that wages would stagnate to the benefit of profits and financial returns.