Alan Greenspan, economist and longtime head of the Federal Reserve, dies at 100

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NBC News

Jun. 22, 2026, 7:03 AM EDT


Alan Greenspan, the influential economist who steered U.S. monetary policy during his five terms as chairman of the Federal Reserve under four presidents, died Monday, his wife said in a statement.

He was 100.

Greenspan helped shape modern American capitalism from the final years of the Cold War era through the dawn of the digital age. He presided over the Fed during one of the longest economic expansions in U.S. history, a boom stretching from 1991 to 2001. But he was also faulted for decisions that critics say created the conditions for the global financial crisis of 2007-08, such as advocating for deregulation of the financial sector.

He is survived by his wife of 29 years, Andrea Mitchell, the chief Washington correspondent and chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News. “Alan passed away at our home this morning at the age of 100 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease,” Mitchell said in a statement. “He was a giant of a man who helped shape the U.S. economy for decades under presidents of both parties, but was always honest in acknowledging his mistakes,” she said.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/obituaries/alan-greenspan-economist-longtime-head-federal-reserve-dies-100-rcna42286

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Happy Days Are Here Again

[GCG]

2. About Fucking time

[raccoon]

3. Why do people like him and Kissinger live so long?

They must be part vampire.

[Javaman]

5. because they are ungodly wealthy and afford the best treatment.

while the rest of us...

[BComplex]

8. And Dick Cheney. And now Donald Trump...only 80, but who has done 100 years

worth of damage to a very young democracy. I don't get it, either, Raccoon.

[Javaman]

4. how about that. nt

[Martin Eden]

6. My mother taught me to speak only good of the dead.

Alan Greenspan is dead.

Good.

[GiqueCee]

7. It should be noted...

... that Greenspan was also an ardent devotee of Alisa Rosenbaum's (Ayn Rand's real name) psychotic bullshit.
I suspect that Elon Musk might be that deranged as well, given his diatribes against empathy. Rand hated altruism in any and every form, and ranted against it at every possible opportunity. A real sweetheart, that one.

[BComplex]

9. Ayn Rand still lives on in the republican party, and in the academia of the University of

Chicago. I wish her shit would have died with her.

[GiqueCee]

12. Likewise, I'm sure...

Congressman Paul Ryan made his entire staff read her doorstop books. Her essays were, shall we say, colorful, as well, and just as poorly written as Fountainhead Shrugged. (Both books were so similar in plot lines, that they may as well have been one cinder block of a book) The Virtue of Selfishness is mercifully short, but still vomit-inducing to anyone with a shred of conscience.

[pansypoo53219]

29. my uncle gave me the paperbacks he bought for his wife. i tried to read atlas shrugged. i couldn't finish the1st

page it was so bad. and i read dictionaries + old encyclopedias. shit. i read a 20's book on sexual diseases. spinsters was a disease.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. "Rand hated altruism in any and every form, and ranted against it at every possible opportunity."

But made sure she collected her "socialist" Social Security check every month, becoming the very "parasite" that she derisively labeled others.

[SouthBayDem]

13. Why write Rand's real name? nt

[GiqueCee]

14. Why not?

[mountain grammy]

16. Never knew her real name

Wish I had. Could of been useful. Thanks for that info.

[GiqueCee]

20. Back in the sixties...

... I worked for a couple of guys who were serious "Objectivists", which is what keen followers of Rand called themselves. I was strongly encouraged to read her works, so I know a lot more about her than I would like.
Sadly, the stench of her influence lives on in the GOP.

[radical noodle]

10. Ironically

He warned against income inequality, but seemed to blame the poor for not being properly educated instead of blaming the greedy rich.

[OhioBack2Blue]

15. Another Ayn Rand kook that destroyed this country. Good riddance!

I remember this moron, from late 80s & 90s, talking on news programs. I was in my 20s and knew he was absolutely he was taking down the middle class with his bonkers Ayn Rand jibberish.

And, as proof establishment Dems and Rs are in bed together in a "unitary party" here is who appointed him Reagan, Bush, Clinton (reappointed), and George W. Bush. The fix was clearly in when Bakker and Volker put Greenspans name to Reagan initially.

This man alone, is responsible for tremendous damage to the middle class of the United States of America.

Our system is so broken.

Still waiting for Americans to unite and pick up the pitchforks.

[lildDemz]

17. Greenspan read Atlas Shrugged

while it was being written.

[popsdenver]

18. Yet, just another Republican

sub human pieces of shit, full of self aggrandizement, like so many other modern day Republican Politcians and Republican leading figures.......there are countless numbers of them, all relying on others with similar thinking to prop each other, and themselves up....

[Aristus]

19. Good riddance.

I don't believe in a Hell for him to burn in for all eternity. But at least we human beings are rid of that asshole.

[TygrBright]

21. Let me know where they're planting him.

I wanna go water it.

hopefully,
Bright

[modrepub]

22. We Come To Bury Greenspan

Not to praise him.

Seriously, this was a guy whose only job was to make milquetoast statements that would have reporters and pundits grasping for interpretation. Like Chauncey Gardiner in Being There. Never experienced a real days work in his life and his long tenure probably did more damage to the economy than if we had switched out after his term expired.

[Martin68]

28. He caused a great deal of real harm. Chaunceuy was just a puppet.

[Grins]

23. He did a lot of economic damage.

Smart, but when needed he decided being a Republican was more important than being an honest economist. He marveled at Bill Clinton's curiosity over the economy and the national debt, stunned when he turned theory into policy that turned into a surplus.

Then, on the FOURTH DAY of our "MBA president's" first term, this guy, no fucking less:

"The time has come, in my judgment, to consider a budgetary strategy that is consistent with a preemptive smoothing of the glide path to zero federal debt or, more realistically, to the level of federal debt that is an effective irreducible minimum.'' - Alan Greenspan, in Senate testimony, Jan. 25, 2001.

He was advocating for tax cuts because surpluses were bad. So he claimed. Too bad we never found out if that theory was true.

Bush signed the GOP tax cut bill into law 07 June 2001. And Clinton's surpluses evaporated! Revenues plunged, the economy slid into a recession, the stock market began a three-year plunge that wiped out investment profits. The GOP's projections of surpluses of $5.6 trillion over 10 years, became deficits of at least $1.4 trillion to $5 trillion.

And then 9/11 hit....

[question everything]

24. RIP. He served his country the best he thought fit. Did not enriched himself

Why all the vile pouring here?

[BumRushDaShow]

25. Here

Link to tweet

ian bremmer
@ianbremmer
·
Follow
ayn rand was in the oval office when alan greenspan was sworn in as chairman of the council of economic advisers.

worth remembering how her thinking landed at a very specific point in time…and really influenced the course of us economic history.
Image
10:20 AM · Jun 22, 2026

[question everything]

36. why bring image from, when 1978? And, Ayn Rand was pro choice, for what its is worth

[BumRushDaShow]

37. Libertarians like Rand & Ron Paul and even idiots like Bill Maher, are also "pro-choice"

but their shtick is that they are that way because they want complete "deregulation", meaning goodbye to any civil rights laws associated with discrimination against any group traditionally targeted by the PTB.

They are also against any type of safety net programs for the least among us, considering anyone needing such is some kind of lazy "welfare cheat" and they are at fault for their status in life.

It's been awhile since I uttered this but FUCK RON PAUL, HIS EVIL SPAWN, AND THE PURVEYORS OF THEIR EVIL AND SELFISH PHILOSOPHY PROMOTED BY ILK LIKE AYN RAND.

[PuraVidaDreamin]

26. Hmm.

That’s all I’ve got.

[Martin68]

27. I don't believe "he was always honest in acknowledging his mistakes."

[pansypoo53219]

30. how did he knot know INFLATION. he fucked up the social security fix BIG TIME.

KILL THE CAP!

[BlueTsunami2018]

31. Fascist slime shouldn't live this long.

But somehow the worst of the worst seem to linger forever.

[Wild blueberry]

32. Good effing riddance

[BaronChocula]

33. He probably should have stuck to the clarinet n/t

[generalbetrayus]

34. Sorry, Alan, you just couldn't put off dying forever.

[CousinIT]

35. He's one of the he-men who silenced and marginalized Brooksley Born after she..

...predicted the derivatives crash a decade before it happened. She was hushed, marginalized, and silenced for it. Because they didn't think any woman would know what she was talking about when it came to the economy.

[GenThePerservering]

38. Here I thought guys stopped reading Ayn Rand at the age when their acne cleared up

[Polybius]

39. He gets a lot of hate, but the economy really boomed under him in the 90s

I know a lot of that has to do with Bill Clinton, but Clinton himself liked Greenspan. Not only did he never try to fire him, but he reappointed him to serve additional terms as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1996 and 2000.

[BumRushDaShow]

40. And then 2007 happened, leaving Bernanke with a nightmare thanks to his predecessor's policies.

[Polybius]

43. True

Although I blame a lot of that on W Bush.

[BumRushDaShow]

44. The chipping away of Dodd-Frank

and persistent attempts to gut the CPFB, are setting us up for yet another "Groundhog Day" repeat cycle, where the GOP crashes the economy and Democrats are brought in out of voter disgust, but are then forced to waste time trying to fix it, and get blamed for the hard work needed to fix it.

Time to break out of this idiotic cycle.

[Maru Kitteh]

41. Condolences to those that cared for him.

That’s the best I’ve got.

[LudwigPastorius]

42. He's not dead.

He just stopped being irrationally exuberant.

[The Grand Illuminist]

45. Why the celebrating?

He did his damage and nothing was done about it before hand.