FROM PAGE B4

‘90S BOOM

At the Fed, Greenspan built on the successes of his predecessor, Paul Volcker, who stamped out the raging inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Indeed, in his final few years at the central bank, Greenspan spent more time worrying about the risks of deflation taking hold than about high inflation ​re-emerging.

The 10-year expansion in the 1990s was fueled in part by a huge ​stock rally that Greenspan suggested in 1996 might reflect an “irrational exuberance.” He later backed away from that comment, saying it was not his role to second-guess investors.

Greenspan was often referred to as the second most powerful person in the country, after the president, because of the central bank’s ability to influence the economy through changes in short-term interest rates.

Pensive, serious and quiet, he laid out his views in elliptical testimonies and speeches that were parsed endlessly by pundits. He once warned an economists’ group that he spent a lot of his time worrying about being too ​clear.

“What I’ve learned at the Fed is a new language called ‘Fed speak.’ We learn to mumble with great incoherence,” he said.

“If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said,” he added.

He could speak in ​such a roundabout way that his wife, Andrea Mitchell, said she “just didn’t get it” the first few times he proposed marriage. The couple dated for 12 years before they married in April 1997. It was the second marriage for both.

Greenspan said he did his best thinking in the bathtub, indulging in baths that sometimes lasted two hours as he read reports and wrote speeches and public testimony.

Born in New York City on March 6, 1926, Greenspan was the only child of Rose and Herbert Greenspan. His parents divorced when he was young, and he was raised in a small apartment in the Washington Heights section of New York with his mother and grandparents.

MUSIC CAME FIRST

Born in New York City on March 6, 1926, Greenspan was the only child of Rose and Herbert Greenspan. His parents divorced when he was young and he was raised in a small apartment in the Washington Heights section of New York with his mother and grandparents.

Greenspan’s first love was music and he spent two years at New York’s Juilliard School studying the clarinet. ​He toured briefly with a swing band as a saxophone player before turning to economics studies at New York University.

In his youth, Greenspan was a friend and associate of the novelist Ayn Rand, ​who espoused the supremacy of the free markets and the profit motive in books such as “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

Before his Fed years, he chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Gerald Ford in the 1970s. He also ran an economics consulting firm called Townsend-Greenspan and Co. for years.

When Greenspan succeeded Volcker, some worried he might not live up to his tough-minded, cigar-chomping predecessor.

But Greenspan soon proved his ​mettle by pumping liquidity into financial markets to calm the October 1987 stocks crash. His quick action, which is now seen as a textbook example of how to handle such crises, was credited with staving off a recession.