Institute of Political Economy

Alan Greenspan bade us farewell today. A man who was celebrated as the central bankers' central banker based on the conviction that markets are divine and volatility is a virtue. His epitaph? A singular, glorious confession: “I found a flaw in my model of the world.” A flaw, he said, as though it were a leaky pipe, not a total collapse of the intellectual architecture that anointed him Oracle. For decades, he preached that the self-interest of the predator was the invisible hand of the common good. Then, in 2008, the beast devoured the table, and to his credit he blinked, admitting that his entire worldview—the one that central bankers canonized and the world swallowed—was a fairy tale for rentiers. He did not, of course, admit to culpability. That would require a moral compass, a device notably absent from his Ayn Randian toolbelt. No, he merely noted the flaw, as a meteorologist might note a gust of wind, and returned to his well-earned silence. So farewell, Maestro. You helped erect a broken global casino economy, but at least you had the decency to read the autopsy report aloud. Alas, countless millions are still paying for your asterisk. nytimes.com/2026/06/22/us/al…