Customer Reviews

Alan Shrugged: Alan Greenspan, the World's Most Powerful Banker

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This is a fascinating look at this most powerful and influential banker, whose mind for economical and political thinking is world-renown. Even better, Tuccille explores his relationship with Ayn Rand, the legendary novelist and philosopher, and what made their relationship tick. Filled with anecdotes, and incredibly detailed research, this look at Greenspan is engrossing. Anyone interested in economics, politics, or just a good biography should not miss this!

If your view of Alan Greenspan is one of a humorless, pin-striped central banker, Jerome Tuccille has someone he'd like to introduce you to: Alan Greenspan, the jazz musician, libertarian philosopher and wooer of media princesses. In this lively and engaging book, Tuccille weaves together Greenspan's biography, a colorful history of the times and an analysis of political and economic philosophy. Of special note is the book's detailed look at how the thinking of Ayn Rand influenced Greenspan. We from getAbstract strongly recommend this book for such intellectual fare, as well as its juicer tidbits - like Greenspan's torrid fling with Barbara Walters.

This is probably one of the lesser known of the books about Greenspan. However, I picked it up after randomly coming across it and found it to be intelligent and insightful, with more insight into his personality than his monetary policy, which is fine with me because there are a million places to learn more than you'd ever want to know about that.
Most people think of Alan Greenspan as the prototypical conservative banker, with his "dour" appearance and somber, wordy pronouncements. However, if you read this book, you will find that in some respects nothing could be further than the truth. An eccentric and a bohemian, Alan Greenspan was a Greenwich Village jazz saxophonist and an amateur philosopher until his mid twenties when Greenspan developed his true focus on economics. The book even alludes to the notion that he had been exposed to marijuana and the counterculture of that New York scene a full generation before the 1960's.
All in all, this book does a lot for Greenspan's image as a chronically unhip person. Similarly, it does a good job of establishing that Greenspan's beliefs and actions are grounded in genuine moral disdain for economic leftism and its disasterous implications.
So, if you can pick up a copy I really recommend this lesser known book. There is a lot of outlandish idolization of Greenspan as "the oracle" or some similar silliness. He is no oracle, just a very fine economist who seems to have a pretty interesting life story as well.

This is a fascinating look at this most powerful and influential banker, whose mind for economical and political thinking is world-renown. Even better, Tuccille explores his relationship with Ayn Rand, the legendary novelist and philosopher, and what made their relationship tick. Filled with anecdotes, and incredibly detailed research, this look at Greenspan is engrossing. Anyone interested in economics, politics, or just a good biography should not miss this!

I am an avid reader of the works of Ayn Rand. I picked up this book from a used book store thinking that it would be a nice book to give an overview of the career of Alan Greenspan with special emphasis on his relationship with Ayn Rand. Unfortunately, I was bored by the content on Alan Greenspan and offended by the content on Ayn Rand.

The initial chapters on Greenspan's youth and his hobby as a jazz player are interesting. However, the latter sections on Greenspan as a financial adviser (for Ford and Reagan) and his time with the Federal Reserve are somewhat informative but boring to read. Chairing the Federal Reserve is not exactly the most exciting position, so perhaps the author is just doing the best with the material he has.

This is true but the treatment of Ayn Rand is very unkind if not just downright immature. For example, Tuccille writes "[M]uch of Rand's rational individualism was in harmony with the teachings of the scholastic Thomas Aquinas....But Rand *chose* to believe that she had created a new morality that stood Christianity on its head."

The emphasis on the word 'chose' is mine. Reading this paragraph insinuates that not only is Rand's ethical philosophy a mere rehash of previous ideas but that she deliberately and dishonestly *evaded* this fact. While both Rand and Aquinas have Aristotelian roots, this is still not an honest comment to make in passing about Rand's philosophy. It is not appropriate for me to go into details about the details between Rand and Aquinas here, but any interested reader can learn about Rand's ethical philosophy by reading 'The Virtue of Selfishness' by Ayn Rand, 'Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand' by Leonard Peikoff or 'Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics' by Tara Smith.

There are numerous other snipes at Ayn Rand throughout the book, but the comment above is very representative.

I definitely do not recommend this book for genuine fans of Objectivism. I also do not recommend this book for general fans of laissez-faire capitalism as I do not see much value in this book for this broader audience either.

He's called "the most powerful man in the world" and yet there has always been a sense of mystery which surround his private life. Coming from Washington Heights in New York where he lived wiht his grandparents, to become a power broker of the "first Order," he excelled in how to manage money and control economic crises. He was pivotal in America's economic expansion. Now, that he is retiring, the United States of Europe are taking over as the superpower of the wealthy.

We find outabout Greenspan's training as an economist. Using the opinions and knowledge of his peers, Henry Kissinger, Milton Friedman and former U. S. Predsident Gerald Ford, who appointed him to the Federal Reserve. He served under five presidents on the Federal Reserve Board and Chairman. In the photo section, he is shown with former presidents Gore, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, and Bush, Sr.

Before that heady position, he excelled in academics and music at George Washington High School; in the '43 yearbook, he was listed as taking part in orchestra, dance band, was class president, and labeled as "smart as a whip and talented." He was a musician at Julliard, and played clarinet and saxophone as he toured with Henry Jerome's jazz band and in a trio (photo).

He hobnobbed with the wealthy at the O'Conner parties, including Allen Blumenthal in the mid '50s. Back in 1955, he looked a lot like Estes Keaufaur with the horn-rimmed glasses. That didn't keep him from marrying two beautiful women. Like Prince Charles of England, he had two women in his first marriage, a young beauty and Ann Rand who played a big role in his life. An old man never learns, even a smart one -- he married again in 1997 to a 'dead ringer' of his first wife. This time he married up into society.

Just as another super hero of an earlier era, Nathan Bedford Forrest, the greatest Civil War General (according to Robert E. Lee), he was the target of cartoonists (not comics!). In one, he is one of the five "enduring national monuments" in Washington, D.C.

As a teenager with rolled up jeans, he is talller than his mom, Rose Goldsmith, who held the Bible when he was sworn in as Chairman of Council of Economic Advisers in 1974. There he looks like Norman Lynch. Now, he looks more like Larry King. One picture in the photo section tells a story of its own; he's shown in the Oval office under the portrait of George Washington (what's more appropriate?) with Bush, Sr. and cronies.

To end with a riddle: How many central bankers does it take to replace a lightbulb? Only one -- Greenspan holds the bulb and the world revolves around him. That's the story of his life. He is certainly an exceptional individual, a marvelous government servant as opposed to the two giving me "what-for" right now.

This was an enormously disappointing, jingoistic, mass market human interest biography from which I learned little about the Fed and monetary policy, but from which I learned a great deal about the author's commitment to pseudo-intellectual, hyper-libertarianism and what passes for serious literature in the U.S. mass market. Pass on this unless you want an invitation to worship at the grave of Ayn Rand. You could log into a right wing blog and get the same stuff for free.