Alan Greenspan, who chaired the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, has died, according to NPR. He was 100.

Born on March 6, 1926, Greenspan served as the 13th chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, beginning his tenure on August 11, 1987, under President Ronald Reagan. He would go on to serve under three more presidents — George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush — before stepping down in 2006. No other Fed chairman in the modern era held the post for as long.

His 18-year tenure spanned some of the most consequential periods in postwar U.S. economic history: the 1987 stock market crash, the savings and loan crisis, the dot-com boom and bust, the September 11 attacks, and the early stages of the housing expansion that would eventually unravel into the 2008 financial crisis — which came after he had left office but drew sustained scrutiny of his rate and regulatory policies.

A Tenure Defined by Market Crises and Policy Dominance

Greenspan arrived at the Fed two months before Black Monday — October 19, 1987 — when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 22 percent in a single session. His decision to inject liquidity into the system and issue a public statement assuring the availability of credit was one of the first major tests of his chairmanship. Markets stabilized within days.

Through the 1990s, Greenspan became perhaps the most closely watched central banker in American history. His statements before Congress moved markets measurably; traders parsed every word of his semi-annual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony for signals about the federal funds rate. His 1996 warning about "irrational exuberance" in equity markets entered the financial lexicon and is still cited in discussions of asset bubbles.

His approach to monetary policy leaned on discretion over rules. He was skeptical of rigid inflation-targeting frameworks that other central banks adopted during the same period, preferring to weigh a broader array of economic signals. That flexibility drew praise through the long expansion of the 1990s and sharpened criticism after the housing market collapsed. In a 2008 congressional hearing — after leaving office — Greenspan said he had found a "flaw" in his ideology, specifically his assumption that the self-interest of lending institutions would protect shareholders and equity. It was an unusually direct concession from a figure known for carefully hedged public language.

His longevity at the Fed was matched by his influence outside it. Before his appointment, Greenspan had run his own economic consulting firm and served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Gerald Ford. He was a close associate of philosopher Ayn Rand and remained a recurring figure in Washington policy circles well after his retirement.

The Fed chairmanship carries a four-year term, renewable by the sitting president; Greenspan was reappointed across four administrations. That continuity was itself a form of political capital, lending the institution a stability that successive presidents found useful even when they disagreed with specific rate decisions.

His legacy inside the Fed is layered. The framework he operated under — inflation contained, unemployment low, growth sustained — became the benchmark against which subsequent chairs were measured. Ben Bernanke, who succeeded him in February 2006, inherited both the institutional weight of that record and the unresolved vulnerabilities in mortgage markets that Greenspan had declined to address more aggressively through regulatory tools available to the Fed.

Monetary historians and former Fed officials will be revisiting his record for years. The questions are not simple: whether a more aggressive posture on subprime lending in the early 2000s would have deflated the housing bubble without triggering the recession it was meant to prevent is genuinely contested empirical territory, not a settled verdict. What is not contested is the duration and scope of his influence. For nearly two decades, Alan Greenspan was the most consequential non-elected official in the American economy.