# Alan Greenspan **Alan Greenspan** chaired the [[Federal Reserve]] from 1987 to 2006 — the longest-serving and, for most of his tenure, most celebrated central banker of the modern era, dubbed "the Maestro" for presiding over the low-inflation "Great Moderation." His record is now read very differently in light of the [[2008 Financial Crisis]] that erupted barely a year after he left. Greenspan was an ideological figure as much as a technocrat. A member of [[Ayn Rand]]'s inner circle in the 1950s–60s and a lifelong adherent of [[Objectivism]], he carried a deep conviction that markets self-regulate and that government oversight does more harm than good — [[Free Market Fundamentalism]] installed at the commanding height of [[Monetary Policy]]. That conviction had concrete consequences: he kept interest rates low through the early 2000s (feeding the housing bubble), championed adjustable-rate mortgages, and — most consequentially — **opposed regulating derivatives**, helping override CFTC chair Brooksley Born's 1998 warning and clearing the path for the [[Commodity Futures Modernization Act]] that left credit default swaps unregulated. For the KB, Greenspan is **[[Free Market Fundamentalism]] personified** — and its most striking recantation. In October 2008 congressional testimony he admitted he had "found a flaw" in his market ideology, conceding that his belief that banks would protect their own shareholders' interests had proven wrong. That admission, from the man who had embodied deregulatory faith for two decades, is one of the cleanest moments in the entire [[Financial System Timeline]]: the intellectual architecture of the deregulation era acknowledging, too late, its central error. > [!note] Stub > Minimum-viable page supporting the Financial System cluster. Expand with the Rand relationship, the full Fed tenure, the bubble-era rate decisions, and the legacy debate. ## See Also - [[Federal Reserve]] - [[Free Market Fundamentalism]] - [[Objectivism]] - [[Commodity Futures Modernization Act]] - [[2008 Financial Crisis]] - [[Financial System Hub]]