The passing, aged 100, of the former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, prompts thoughts about shifting tensions between politicians and central bankers. Greenspan’s 18-year Fed tenure spanned those of presidents Reagan, Bush senior, Clinton and Bush junior. All had reason to thank him for his mastery of markets, even though history now regards him as a key architect of the 2008 crisis, which came shortly after his retirement and was certainly fuelled by his era of easy money and light regulation.
And though Democrats occasionally took potshots at him for being a free-market right-winger at heart, few seriously accused him of Republican partisanship and no one challenged the abiding value of his institution’s independence. In the US and elsewhere today, the mood is far more mixed.
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