Commentary: Alan Greenspan’s Double-Edged Legacy

Alan Greenspan’s passing invites a reckoning with a legacy defined by two central pillars: crisis management and central bank independence. Both present a complicated double-sided ledger.

Consider crisis management. Greenspan’s response to the 1987 Black Monday stock-market crash established a paradigm for global central banking. In essence, he pledged infinite liquidity to plug market gaps, restore confidence and engineer a recovery. The strategy succeeded brilliantly in 1987, cementing his reputation as the quintessential central banker. For the ensuing 40 years, major central banks worldwide repeatedly deployed this exact playbook.