Greenspan is just getting into his stride
From the Financial Times, March 7 2026 Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, yesterday celebrated his 100th birthday and hinted that he would welcome the chance to serve at the helm of the world's most important central bank for an unprecedented 11th four-year term.
President Chelsea Clinton honoured Mr Greenspan with a small celebration at the White House. They were joined by other senior Fed officials and a small group of individuals with whom Mr Greenspan has worked in his 50 years in public life. These included the president's father, the Rev Bill Clinton, rector of the Harlem Church of Reformed Transgressors, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former actor, governor of California and International Monetary Fund managing director.
Mr Greenspan said he planned to celebrate by sticking to his usual daily regimen of playing a couple of sets of tennis, bench-pressing 300 lb and reciting the monthly statistics for cold-rolled steel production in the Midwest (seasonally adjusted) between 1923 and 1937. He dismissed concerns that his age might be starting to undermine his capacity to run the world's largest economy.
"There is proliferating evidence that centenarian policymaking is producing markedly salutary benefits on the long-run performance of the global economy. This transformation in the work-leisure balance of the superannuated is occurring without serious impairment to productivity levels and is significantly enhancing the prospects for intergenerational knowledge transfers," he said, as he blew out in one breath all 100 candles on a birthday cake in the shape of an inflation-protected 10-year Treasury bond.
The Fed chairman has served under nine presidents from both parties. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987, and then reappointed by Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush, Kerry, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Clinton again.
His term as a governor of the Fed, and, therefore, as chairman, was due to expire in January 2006 but that year President John Kerry asked Congress to pass legislation to repeal the rule that forbids a Fed governor from serving more than one complete 14-year term. Mr Greenspan is now in the middle of his third such term.
The Greenspan years have been a period of extraordinary and unrivalled prosperity for the US economy and most economists acknowledge the central role played by monetary policy in that success.
In his early years at the Fed he steered the US through the 1987 stock market crash and a period of sluggish growth at the beginning of the 1990s.
He was among the first to understand the impact on productivity and trend growth of the information technology revolution in the 1990s. Now that 4 per cent trend growth is taken for granted, it is easily forgotten that 30 years ago many assumed that the economy was stuck on its old track of sustainable output growth of just 2.5 per cent. So when the US began to record higher rates of growth, Mr Greenspan was almost alone in recognising this as the result of a structural change rather than overheating. Consequently the Fed followed monetary policy that allowed the economy to achieve its potential through the late 1990s.
Perhaps most remarkable was his agility in leading the US economy through a perilous period in the early part of the century, when collapsing stock prices, terrorism and war threatened a serious economic downturn. Since then the US has continued to enjoy strong growth and Mr Greenspan has been instrumental in addressing some of the persistent imbalances in the economy - notably the fiscal and current account deficits.
Since human cloning became widely available in the past 10 years, various efforts have been made to reproduce the most famous and successful central banker in history. There are believed to be at least three Alan Greenspans illegally operating in sub-Saharan African economies but the experiments have not been wholly successful.
These countries have achieved striking success in jazz saxophone and their use of prolix sentence-construction but their economic performance has been mixed, with repeated cycles of inflationary bubbles and collapses.
Other central bankers offered their congratulations to Mr Greenspan yesterday. Tony Blair, president of the European Central Bank, said he hoped to emulate Mr Greenspan's longevity and grip on power. But he repeated recent ECB concern about inflationary pressures and ruled out a cut in short-term eurozone interest rates below their current level of 3 per cent where they have been for 22 years, despite almost three decades of economic standstill. Mr Greenspan will travel to Beijing today to receive the felicitations of his G2 counterpart, Chairman Lu of the Bank of China.
With Mr Greenspan and the US economy both in remarkable health it is far from clear when the Fed chairman will step down. He has told colleagues in recent weeks that he would like to serve long enough to achieve a rare statistical feat, whereby he will have been Fed chairman for precisely half his life. This would give him another 22 years in the job. Mr Greenspan is understood to believe that this would give policymakers the time necessary to find a suitable successor without causing dislocation in financial markets.
2026年如果格老还在
2026年3月7日《金融时报》消息，美联储主席艾伦o格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)昨天庆祝了他的100岁生日，并且暗示：如有机会继续执掌世界上最重要的央行，前所未有地留任第11个四年任期，他将感到荣幸。
切尔西o克林顿总统(Chelsea Clinton)在白宫为格林斯潘先生举行了一个小型庆祝会，参加者是美联储的其他高级官员和格林斯潘先生50年公众服务生涯中与之共事的少数精英人士，包括现任总统的父亲，前总统比尔o克林顿（Bill Clinton），他现在是哈莱姆悔改罪人教堂首席神父。客人中还有曾经当过演员，后任加州州长和国际货币基金组织常务董事的阿诺德o施瓦辛格(Arnold Schwarzenegger)。
格林斯潘先生先前表示，他计划在生日当天坚持自己的每日健身制度：打两局网球，仰卧推举300磅，然后背诵1923至1937年(经过季节调整的)美国中西部冷轧钢产量月度统计数字。他对认为高龄会影响自己主掌全球最大经济体能力的忧虑不以为然。
他说："不胜枚举的证据显示，由百岁老人制定政策，正为全球经济的远期表现带来明显的积极效益。老年人的这种工作－休闲比重的转变，既没有对劳动生产率水平造成严重冲击，又显著增强了不同世代人士之间知识转移的机遇"。话音刚落，他一口气吹灭了生日蛋糕上插着的所有100枝蜡烛；蛋糕的图案是10年期的美国通涨保护国债。
这位美联储主席已先后为两个政党的九位总统效劳。他于1987年被罗纳德o里根(Ronald Reagan)任命，然后先后获得布什、克林顿、布什、克里、布什、克林顿、布什，最后又是克林顿总统的再度任命。
他担任美联储总裁的任期原定于2006年1月满期，这意味着届时他无法继续担任美联储主席，但那一年约翰o克里(John Kerry)总统请国会通过新的立法，撤销美联储总裁在14年任期届满后不得继续任职的禁令。如今，格林斯潘先生的第三个美联储总裁任期刚刚过半。
在格林斯潘主持美联储工作的年代，美国经济取得了出类拔萃和无可比拟的成就，而多数经济学家认同他的货币政策在其中扮演的中心角色。
在美联储任职伊始，格林斯潘就带领美国走出了1987年股市崩盘和二十世纪九十年代初期经济停滞不前的阴影。
他率先洞察二十世纪九十年代发生的信息技术革命对于劳动生产率和经济增长趋势形成的影响。当今人们对4%的经济增长趋势早已习以为常，但大家似乎都忘了30年前许多人认为美国可持续的经济增长率只有2.5%。因此，那时候当美国经济开始实现较高的增长率时，几乎只有格林斯潘先生一人意识到这是结构性变革的产物，而不是经济过热现象。结果，美联储实行的货币政策，使美国经济在二十世纪九十年代后期充分迸发了其内在潜能。
也许最值得称道的，是格林斯潘先生在本世纪初审时度势，机智地带领美国经济渡过了一段危机四伏的时期，当时，崩溃的股价、恐怖主义和战争，使经济严重衰退的乌云挥之不去。在那以后，美国经济实现了持续强劲的增长，而格林斯潘先生在处置美国经济的顽固失衡状态(最突出的是财政赤字和经常项目逆差)方面指点迷津，发挥了主导作用。
过去10年来人类克隆方兴未艾，人们多次试图复制这位有史以来最知名和最成功的央行负责人。据信，目前至少有三名"艾伦o格林斯潘"在撒哈拉以南的非洲国家非法运作，但这些实验并没有取得全面成功。
这些国家在爵士萨克斯风和运用冗长拗口的句子方面成就斐然，但经济表现喜忧参半，泡沫和崩溃的周期反复出现。
昨天，其他国家的央行负责人纷纷向格林斯潘先生致贺。欧洲央行(ECB)总裁托尼o布莱尔(Tony Blair)表示，他希望仿效格林斯潘先生的长寿和抓住权力的本领。但他再次强调了近期ECB关于通涨压力的关切，并排除了削减短期欧元利率的可能性。尽管欧洲经济停滞不前已有近三十年，但欧元利率在过去22年来一直保持在3%。今天，格林斯潘先生将启程前往北京，接受他的"2国集团"（G2）同行，中国央行Lu行长的道贺。
鉴于格林斯潘先生和美国经济均处于良好的健康状态，很难看出这位美联储主席将于何时离任。最近几周，他向同事们表示，他希望继续留任，创造后半生皆为美联储主席的统计奇迹。这意味着他将继续任职22年。据悉，格林斯潘先生相信，这将使政策制定者们有足够的时间来物色合适的继任人，而不致引发金融市场的慌乱。
