Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chair, dies at 100

The Federal Reserve said Monday that former Chair Alan Greenspan has died. He was 100. The Associated Press, citing his wife, journalist Andrea Mitchell, reported that he died from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Greenspan was one of the most influential figures in modern U.S. monetary policy, leading the nation’s central bank from 1987 to 2006. In a press release posted Monday morning, the Fed said he “served as the 13th Chairman of the Board of Governors from 1987 to 2006.”

“The Federal Reserve notes with deep sadness the passing of Alan Greenspan,” the Board of Governors said in the June 22 statement. The Fed added that it extends “its deepest condolences to his wife, Andrea Mitchell, and to his family.”

Greenspan was born March 6, 1926. He retired from the Fed on Jan. 31, 2006, after roughly 18 1/2 years as chair, one of the longest tenures in the institution’s history.

Nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and reappointed through successive terms, Greenspan presided over the Fed across a period of major economic and financial change. Just two months into his tenure, he faced the October 1987 “Black Monday” stock market crash, an early test that helped establish his reputation for steady crisis management.

He remained at the helm through the late-Cold War period, the long economic expansion of the 1990s and the early-2000s downturn. Over that span, Greenspan became a defining public face of the Federal Reserve, shaping interest-rate policy and the central bank’s response to changing economic conditions.

After leaving office, Greenspan ran a consulting practice and continued to comment publicly on the economy. Mitchell told the AP: “To me he was my husband, who shaped my life from our very first date in 1984.”

For years, Greenspan was widely admired in Washington and on Wall Street. But his standing shifted after the 2007-09 financial crisis, when critics argued that his market-friendly and deregulatory views had helped leave the financial system vulnerable.

In 2008, reflecting on assumptions about market self-regulation, Greenspan publicly acknowledged error, saying: “I made a mistake.”

That reassessment complicated the legacy of a central banker who, for nearly two decades, stood at the center of U.S. economic policymaking. Even so, his long tenure and outsized role in shaping the Fed’s modern era made him one of the most consequential central bank leaders of his time.