Synopsis In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, in his fourteenth
year as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan took part
in a very quiet collective effort to ensure that America didn't
experience an economic meltdown, taking the rest of the world with it.
There was good reason to fear the worst: the stock market crash of
October 1987, his first major crisis as Federal Reserve Chairman,
coming just weeks after he assumed control, had come much closer than
is even today generally known to freezing the financial system and
triggering a genuine financial panic. But the most remarkable thing
that happened to the economy after 9/11 was...nothing. What in an
earlier day would have meant a crippling shock to the system was
absorbed astonishingly quickly.
After 9/11 Alan Greenspan knew, if he needed any further reinforcement,
that we're living in a new world - the world of a global capitalist
economy that is vastly more flexible, resilient, open, self-directing,
and fast-changing than it was even 20 years ago. It's a world that
presents us with enormous new possibilities but also enormous new
challenges. The Age of Turbulence is Alan Greenspan's
incomparable reckoning with the nature of this new world - how we got
here, what we're living through, and what lies over the horizon, for
good and for ill-channeled through his own experiences working in the
command room of the global economy for longer and with greater effect
than any other single living figure. He begins his account on that
September 11th morning, but then leaps back to his childhood, and
follows the arc of his remarkable life's journey through to his more
than 18-year tenure as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, from 1987
to 2006, during a time of transforming change. Alan Greenspan
shares the story of his life first simply with an eye toward doing
justice to the extraordinary amount of history he has experienced and
shaped. But his other goal is to draw readers along the same learning
curve he followed, so they accrue a grasp of his own understanding of
the underlying dynamics that drive world events. In the second half of
the book, having brought us to the present and armed us with the
conceptual tools to follow him forward, Dr. Greenspan embarks on a
magnificent tour de horizon of the global economy. He reveals the
universals of economic growth, delves into the specific facts on the
ground in each of the major countries and regions of the world, and
explains what the trend-lines of globalization are from here. The
distillation of a life's worth of wisdom and insight into an elegant
expression of a coherent worldview, The Age of Turbulence will stand as Alan Greenspan's personal and intellectual legacy.
Editorial Reviews
The Washington Post -
Sebastian Mallaby Greenspan's
political memoir, which occupies the first half of the book, is
readable, lucid and sometimes a bit thin on the dilemmas of monetary
policy. In the book's second half, Greenspan the charmer makes way for
Greenspan the technician, and the result is a 250-page essay on
globalization. His overviews of Russia, India and China say little that
is not familiar to attentive readers of the news. But the last chapter
makes a powerful and remarkably self-deprecating point. Readers who
persevere will feel rewarded.
About the Authors
Alan Greenspan was born in 1926 in the Washington Heights neighborhood
of New York City. After studying the clarinet at Juilliard and working
as a professional musician, he earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in
Economics from New York University. In 1954, he co-founded the economic
consulting firm Townsend-Greenspan & Co. From 1974 to 1977, he
served as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President
Gerald Ford. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed him Chairman of
the Federal Reserve Board, a position he held until his retirement in
2006.
Product Details
Hardcover: 544 pages
Carton Size: 12 books
Publisher: Penguin Press (September 17, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594201315
ISBN-13: 978-1594201318
Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.58 x 1.66 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
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