Greenspan had the main ideas right:
Low inflation over full employment, because inflation is the worst tax on the people;
And broad property ownership as the foundation supporting the American economy and securing the consent of the governed.
During his nearly 20-year tenure, the Federal Funds Effective Rate averaged 4.87%.
This is a really good look at Greenspan's career from Marty Steinberg at CNBC. It is one of the best reads I've had at CNBC in a long time.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Fed, dies at age 100
... Throughout, he focused on fighting inflation over promoting full employment. His supporters say he presided over the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, but critics said Greenspan’s low interest rate policies set the stage for the housing bubble that burst into the Great Recession a year after his successor, Ben Bernanke, took the Fed helm.
... in his best-selling memoir “The Age of Turbulence,” he defended the low-rate policy, which encouraged people to buy homes: “I believed then, as now, that the benefits of broadened homeownership are worth the risk. Protection of property rights, so critical to a market economy, requires a critical mass of owners to sustain political support.” ...
