This is the biography of one of the titans of
financial history over the last fifty years. Born in 1926, Alan
Greenspan was raised in Manhattan by a single mother and immigrant
grandparents during the Great Depression but by quiet force of
intellect, rose to become a global financial 'maestro'. Appointed by
Ronald Reagan to Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a post he held for
eighteen years, he presided over an unprecedented period of stability
and low inflation, was revered by economists, adored by investors and
consulted by leaders from Beijing to Frankfurt. Both data-hound and
eligible society bachelor, Greenspan was a man of contradictions. His
great success was to prove the very idea he, an advocate of the Gold
standard, doubted: that the discretionary judgements of a money-printing
central bank could stabilise an economy. He resigned in 2006, having
overseen tumultuous changes in the world's most powerful economy. Yet
when the great crash happened only two years later many blamed him, even
though he had warned early on of irrational exuberance in the market
place. Sebastian Mallaby brilliantly shows the subtlety and complexity
of Alan Greenspan's legacy. Full of beautifully rendered high-octane
political infighting, hard hitting dialogue and stories, The Man Who
Knew is superbly researched, enormously gripping and the story of the
making of modern finance.
