The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan — Five: AGAINST THE NEW FRONTIER

1. 1. By 1961, Keynesian economists believed they could fine-tune the economy to deliver permanently low unemployment with only modest inflation, using the Phillips curve.
2. 2. Greenspan opposed the Kennedy administration's economic policies, warning that monetary expansion would eventually cause inflation despite temporary suppression by price controls.
3. 3. Greenspan argued that the Federal Reserve's creation was a historic disaster because it replaced salutary money panics with the conditions for the Great Depression.
4. 4. Greenspan advocated for a return to private gold-backed currency, asserting that government fiat money is ultimately backed by coercion, not honor.
5. 5. Greenspan believed that only a small number of intellectual leaders needed to be converted to objectivism to restore laissez-faire capitalism, comparing the movement to early communism.
6. 6. Ayn Rand and Greenspan supported Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, viewing him as a vehicle for laissez-faire, but Rand later criticized his lack of intellectual substance.
7. 7. Greenspan's firm Townsend-Greenspan boomed in the early 1960s, but he refused to hire a true peer, preferring to promote talented women who were undervalued due to discrimination.
8. 8. Greenspan's relationship with his father Herbert was strained; he allowed him to visit the office only once a year on his birthday, and Herbert belittled his success.
9. 9. Greenspan's 1964 lectures on the Economics of a Free Society were vetted by Rand and Branden, who insisted on clarity and connection to individualism and freedom.
10. 10. Greenspan predicted that within one generation, a U.S. presidential candidate fully committed to laissez-faire could emerge, following Goldwater's campaign.