The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World

The Age of Turbulence is really two books, one autobiographical, the other the author's economic analysis of various issues/countries. While in the autobiographical part, there are some observations and comments, of the important persons in the author's life, this is "no tell" all book. The author's honesty, integrity, and personal habits do not lend themself to the telling of juicy tidbits. In both the autobiographical section and the analytical section, Greenspan rallies against "Fabian socialism" and for "creative destruction." While he recognizes that a certain safety net is necessary to prevent social disorder, he, by his own admissison, doesn't get far beyond Adam Smith. For instance, he recounts -- almost with relish -- how, after the Berlin wall fell, a "low wage" East German factory, put a "high wage" West German factory out of business. Now, I'm not against developing countries (in this case the former East Germany) developing their economies, but let's not foget the worker in the developed (e.g. US) factory. It is not situation where a thousand (low paying) jobs create demand that offsets the economic effect of the laid off high paying worker. The reality is that laid off workers, if lucky, will find employement, but at a much lower wage. The will be able to afford less, and look to cheap imports to make the family budget stretch --driving more even jobs to the developing world. Some the laid off will not be so lucky. X number will turn to alcohol or drugs to deaden the pain of their misfortune, Y number will turn to criminal activity to make ends meet, and even a few, Z number, will attempt suicide because of the emotional trauma of being told they are "not needed". In the form of payroll for substance abuse counselors, police, lawyers, probation/correctional officers, medical and mental health professionals X, Y, and Z "generate" income that "adds" to the calucation of the GDP. However, more properly, just like inflation, interest rates, and enegry costs, X, Y, and Z are drags on the economy. The failure to account for this as a "cost" as opposed to an "asset" in the GDP is an accounting error of the first order. The cost of X, Y, and Z aside, except for a prediction of low inflation (due primarily to low cost immigrant labor and the low cost of labor for imported goods), Greenspan offers little comfort to the American worker. In conclusion, Greenspan's personal life is an interesting, but far from scandalous, read. His far-reaching economic analyses, albeit flawed in places is worth reading -- even if he delivers unwelcomed news. Greenspan

My expertise, if any, is not in the field of economics. Even so, I was hot to read this book as soon as it came out. Alan Greenspan has always seemed to me a powerful and mysterious figure - a shaman or wizard, perhaps - who emerged from the shadows periodically to make inexplicable pronouncements on the economy. I was, as perhaps we all were, somewhat afraid of him and at the same time in awe of his miraculous power over the financial health of the country. And he made me feel safe. Although I didn't understand what he did, I knew he did it well and I felt a real twinge of unease when he retired. So I thought this would be my chance to demystify his life and bring him back down to a human level. In some ways, this book achieved that purpose for me. The first half of the book was autobiographical, although it was largely just a chronology of the main events of his life, and shed little light on the inner man. This should probably not be surprising since Greenspan has always been stupefyingly circumspect; a tell-all book would not be his style. But I did get a much clearer picture of his meteoric career and his 18 years as Federal Reserve chairman. He also describes his working relationships with all the presidents he either worked with or served under, which rounded out my image of several recent presidents. I also learned that Greenspan is a world-famous traveler, mingling with world leaders across the globe and dispensing economic advice in his dry and cautious style in a myriad of venues. He doesn't go out of his way to make this point in the book, but it's obvious throughout. There's an amazing collection of photographs of Greenspan hobnobbing with powerful people, the kind who need no introduction. However, the true power of the narrative is in the second half of the book; here Greenspan analyzes the many facets of the world economy and dispenses his advice for global economic health. In a nutshell, his prescription for the world's economic misery is democracy and capitalism; for the US, more education, less regulation and a return to fiscal restraint on the part of the president and Congress. His commentary is straightforward, although perhaps a bit on the bland side, but ultimately convincing. I found his observations on India, China and Russia particularly enlightening. Economics may not be everyone's cup of tea, but this book is very readable and well worth the time and effort.

It doesn't take but a few minutes into this audiobook to realize that Alan Greenspan was a gem of a man to serve as Fed Chairman. The reader is so confident in the material, I felt as though I was listening to Greenspan himself explaining the world to me. Every person who has a fascination for or love of economics should read, or better yet listen to this book!

Borrowing from a famous investment banking commercial, "when Alan Greenspan talks, people listen". And that's how this book should be approached. This one man, not a president, has had more to do with the everyday life of Americans aged 65 and under than anyone else. Crisis after crisis has been thrown at us and he has deftly defended our economy. It would have been interesting to see how he would have handled the Volker era of high interest rates in the late 70s/early 80s. So let's get to the most controversial area of the book, did he leave interest rates too low too long after 9/11, and should he have attacked subprime lenders? Hindsight builds confidence in critics but our economy did not falter and he builds a compelling case that following the info he had, keeping us from a recession was the most important point. As to housing bubble caused by low interest rates and poor lending practices, it is a compelling case that worries of deflation and how Japan lost control of this in the 80's/90's was significant to the Fed's policy. Should subprime lending have been stopped or slowed? Without a question. But is it the job of the Fed? Greenspan will continue to catch criticism but it is not part of the role of the Fed IMO. The system worked. I-Bankers stretched lending more and more to generate bonds which hedge funds then bought the riskiest tranches. That is where the losses are. That plus the marginal borrowers who should not have been in the loans. What this book does a great job of is giving you insight into the workings of the finance of our govt. for the past 40 years. Reading in the 60s with no computers how the field of economics evolved from hand calculating massive data is hard to believe in today's computer world. The chronological review of his involvement is nothing short of fascinating. Generally, he confirms what has been reported of all the Presidents: Nixon - extremely intelligent with a dark side, Ford - a consensus builder, the lost art in today's politics, Reagan - not much interaction but a guy that knew what he wanted to accomplish and did it with a story, Bush I - the relationship soured based on interest rates but great respect for the man. And that leaves us with last two, Clinton and Bush II. There is no reason for him to like Clinton, different parties, different influences, etc. But Clinton won over Greenspan by focusing on the difficult political agenda of lowering the deficit. This is difficult as it does not have immediate impact to the constituents. Bush II was from the same party and Greenspan agreed to Bush's initial tax cuts. How could their relationship sour? Well, budget deficits returned and Bush maintained total economic interest in cutting taxes whether it was the right thing to do or not. I voted for Bush twice but Greenspan's narrative is subtly scathing. From this fascinating financial history covering the first 248 pages the book transcends to an open discussion of economic th

Greenspan's "The Age of Turbulence" is a tour de force, an incredibly engaging, insightful, and detailed look, not only at the life and history of the most famous economist of the U.S., but of the key economic events that have shaken, molded, and served as the crucible for the global economy of the 21st century. Make no mistake about it: this is a book that will easily become a de facto standard of the genre, and will remain so for years to come. From the opening pages of Greenspan's introduction we immediately become aware that this book is exceptionally and surprisingly well written, and that Greenspan has somehow managed to coalesce the mountains of knowledge and experiences he has accumulated over some six decades of public life into an imminently accessible and, yes, understandable, text. The book opens up with Greenspan's flight back from Switzerland on 9/11, and the interruption of that flight with the news of what had happened in New York City that day. Greenspan peels back the history and lets us in on his many thoughts as his flight made an emergency return to Zurich, and then, subsequently, during his interactions in the weeks that followed with persons at all levels of the government and the banking system. As he lays out his story, we are introduced to numerous asides which explain to us many aspects of the economic system with which we may not yet fully understand or comprehend, and Greenspan deftly intertwines such didactic content in with these life events in a manner that makes us learn as we go, all the while not even realizing we are being educated as we proceed. The book proper continues with this approach of mixing personal history with mini-lessons of economics, first starting with his childhood in New York, then moving to his teen and adolescent years, his PhD work, and his eventual move into government service. We read about his childhood fascination with numbers, his studies at Julliard in music, his love of baseball, his skill in conquering huge masses of data wherever he found them, and see in his upbringing the traits that would serve him (and us) so well in his eventual role as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank. The book is essentially broken into two parts: the first, in which Greenspan draws us through his own learning path through the years so that we can understand how he came to master individual economic events and systems; and the second, the application of these lessons learned toward attempting to understand what he calls today's new global economy. The sweep of the story is grand, and leaves little left unturned. We are allowed to peer into Greenspan's insights and thinking concerning Black Monday, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Rise of China, the role of Russia in world economics, the dot com bubble and burst, and, of course, the effect of globalization as it was ensconced immediately after World War II and how it appears today. In it, Greenspan not only makes his formidable