Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan dies at 100

Alan Greenspan, a longtime chairman of the US Federal Reserve and one of the most influential central bankers of the modern era, has died at the age of 100, his wife Andrea Mitchell said on Monday.

“Alan passed away at our home this morning at the age of 100 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease,” NBC News correspondent Mitchell said in a statement.

Greenspan served as Fed chair from 1987 to 2006, leading the US central bank for nearly two decades of economic expansion, market turmoil and financial shocks.

He became the 13th chair of the Federal Reserve Board two months before the Oct. 19, 1987 stock market crash, known as Black Monday. He was credited with quickly reassuring markets and helping provide liquidity after the crash.

Appointed first by then President Ronald Reagan, Greenspan later served under George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. His tenure covered the 1990s economic boom, the dotcom bubble, the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Greenspan was widely praised for his anti-inflation stance and role in supporting one of the longest periods of economic growth in US history.

However, critics later argued that the Fed’s low interest-rate policy in the early 2000s and its light-touch approach to financial regulation contributed to the housing bubble and the 2008 global financial crisis.

Greenspan acknowledged in 2008 that he had been wrong to assume banks could adequately protect their own interests without stronger regulation.

Born in New York City in 1926, Greenspan initially studied music at The Juilliard School and played saxophone and clarinet before turning to economics. He earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from New York University.

Before joining the Fed, he founded the economic consulting firm Townsend-Greenspan and chaired the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under Gerald Ford.

After leaving the Fed in 2006, Greenspan established Greenspan Associates, a Washington-based economic consulting firm. He was succeeded as Fed chair by Ben Bernanke.

Greenspan received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in 2002 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2005.