Alan Greenspan, the man who presided over the US Federal Reserve for nearly two decades and became synonymous with the financial architecture of the late 20th century, has died at the age of 100. His passing marks the end of an era in which central banking evolved from a backroom function into a global spectacle. Greenspan, whose tenure spanned the 1987 stock market crash, the dot-com bubble and the 2008 financial crisis, was both lauded as a maestro of monetary policy and criticised for the deregulation that sowed the seeds of systemic collapse.
For the City of London, Greenspan’s influence was profound. His policies in Washington rippled across the Atlantic, shaping the deregulatory environment that allowed London to become the world’s premier financial hub. The so-called ‘Great Moderation’ low inflation, stable growth and minimal volatility was his intellectual legacy. But it also bred complacency. Greenspan believed that markets, left to their own devices, would self-correct. That faith was shattered in 2008, when the global banking system teetered on the brink.
Yet to reduce Greenspan to the financial crisis is to ignore his earlier role as an oracle of the information age. In the 1990s, he spoke of ‘irrational exuberance’ before the dot-com crash, a phrase that entered the lexicon. He understood, perhaps better than any contemporary, how technology would reshape productivity and finance. The algorithms that now govern high-frequency trading owe a debt to his belief that data, more than instinct, should drive policy.
Today, as quantum computing begins to edge out classical models, Greenspan’s legacy is a cautionary tale. He was a master of the analogue era, but his faith in rational markets looks naive in the age of AI-driven volatility and systemic cyber risks. The City of London now grapples with digital sovereignty, trying to balance innovation with regulation. Greenspan’s passing is a reminder that financial architecture, however robust, must evolve with the technology that underpins it.
For the common man, Greenspan was a distant figure whose decisions affected mortgage rates and pension pots. His death closes a chapter where central bankers were seen as wizards. Now, we have algorithms and committees. The human element, with all its fallibility and genius, is harder to find. The City of London will mark his passing not just with a minute’s silence, but with a reckoning of what his ideas mean for the digital future.
