Washington DC - Alan Greenspan, the longtime US Federal Reserve chief who presided over an unprecedented American economic expansion but was later faulted for failing to rein in financial markets before the 2008 global crisis, died Monday.
"Alan passed away at our home this morning at the age of 100 from complications of Parkinson's disease," his wife Andrea Mitchell, a veteran correspondent with NBC News, said in a statement published by the network.
"He was a giant of a man who helped shape the U.S. economy for decades under presidents of both parties, but was always honest in acknowledging his mistakes," she added.
Greenspan guided the world's biggest economy through a stock market crash in 1987 as he first took up his post, the Mexican and Asian financial crises, the dotcom boom and bust, and the September 11, 2001 attacks.
A native New Yorker who excelled at math as a child but initially studied music before pivoting to economics, Greenspan spent decades in the inner circles of power in Washington, ultimately leading the Fed for presidents of both political parties.
Greenspan was even hailed as the greatest central banker the world has ever known, winning glowing praise for his steady hand and cool demeanor.
Supporters especially admired his willingness to cut interest rates and keep them low even as unemployment rates fell – which conventional wisdom and his own early beliefs said would cause inflation to spiral out of control.
But his impenetrable prose – which he admitted using to avoid committing to any particular course – and his confidence in unfettered markets and institutions to correct themselves frustrated critics, who believed the US economy needed stronger guardrails.
And after the world sank into crisis in 2008, soon after his retirement in 2006, his decision not to do anything to rein in the mortgage markets was viewed as naive.