2026年6月22日 / 美国东部时间早上7:32 / 哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）新闻
曾在四位美国总统任内担任美联储主席的经济学家艾伦·格林斯潘于周一去世，其妻子安德里亚·米切尔证实。他享年100岁。
米切尔在一份声明中表示，格林斯潘在自己家中因帕金森病并发症去世，该声明被美国全国广播公司（NBC）新闻报道。米切尔本人是NBC新闻华盛顿特区及外交事务首席通讯员。
作为美国历史上任职时间最长的美联储主席之一，格林斯潘在美联储的任期与所谓的“大缓和”时期重合。这一时期从20世纪80年代中期持续至2007年，以低通胀、股市上涨和强劲的经济增长为特征。
与此同时，他的任期内也多次爆发金融危机，从1987年股市崩盘到21世纪初互联网泡沫破裂。1996年，格林斯潘创造了“非理性繁荣”这一著名说法，用以形容投资者毫无节制的乐观情绪催生的资产泡沫，暗指当时互联网公司股票的狂热行情。
更具争议的是，格林斯潘的遗产与2008年全球金融危机及随后的大衰退紧密相关，尽管这场经济崩溃发生在他2006年初结束最后一届美联储主席任期之后。尽管如此，一些批评人士指出，他此前几年的“宽松货币政策”加剧了次贷住房危机，而这场危机最终引发了自大萧条以来美国最严重的经济崩溃。
时任美联储主席的艾伦·格林斯潘于2001年9月20日出席参议院听证会。蒂姆·斯隆/法新社/盖蒂图片社
《经济学人》在2017年的一篇评论文章中写道：“危机后对格林斯潘先生的主要批评是，他天真地相信市场效率，未能在20世纪90年代末或2000年代中期刺破资产泡沫，也未能对金融 sector 进行适当监管。”
格林斯潘本人则为大衰退前的政策进行了辩护。他在2007年接受《财富》杂志采访时表示，自己是“修正主义历史”的受害者，并称他曾就次贷抵押贷款和房地产市场中其他的危险信号发出过警告。
在更年轻的时候，格林斯潘曾告诉《财富》杂志，他曾不重视人类行为在经济学中的作用，认为其“不值得评估”。但他后来意识到，“预测体系中存在非常重要的缺失变量，而这些都与人类的系统性活动相关”。
“你可以预料到人类有时会变得亢奋，也会陷入极度的痛苦和恐惧。你可以确信的是，这一点永远不会改变。”他对该杂志说道。
作为美联储主席，格林斯潘还以其晦涩难懂的经济评论而闻名，议员、经济学家和投资者都争相解读其言论。与此同时，他推动了所谓的美联储政策沟通转型，摒弃了20世纪80年代之前不够透明的做法，主张央行官员提高政策透明度。
“除非有明确目的，否则你不应让市场感到意外。”格林斯潘在2009年美联储口述历史中说道，“过去我们常常毫无目的地让市场感到意外，这并不可取。”
据《纽约时报》报道，格林斯潘于1926年3月6日出生在纽约市，父亲赫伯特·格林斯潘是一名股票经纪人，母亲罗斯·格林斯潘是家庭主妇。据《泰晤士报》透露，他在5岁时父母离婚，部分原因是1929年股市崩盘后的财务压力。
童年时期，格林斯潘就展现出数学天赋，《泰晤士报》指出他在5岁时就能心算三位数加减法。青少年时期，他热衷于音乐，曾在茱莉亚音乐学院学习单簧管，随后进入纽约大学攻读经济学，并最终在该校获得学士、硕士和博士学位。
在攻读经济学期间，格林斯潘成为小说家安·兰德的追随者，纽约大学校友杂志称他会定期在安·兰德位于曼哈顿的公寓中参加她的“客观主义沙龙”。
他的第一份工作是在全国工业会议委员会，负责分析铝、铜和钢铁的需求，随后他创立了自己的经济咨询公司汤森-格林斯潘公司，据美联储官网介绍。
此后，他在杰拉尔德·福特总统任内担任总统经济顾问委员会主席，并成为罗纳德·里根总统经济政策咨询委员会成员。
格林斯潘于1987年由里根总统任命为美联储主席，另外三位总统——乔治·H·W·布什、比尔·克林顿和乔治·W·布什——也先后任命他连任该职位。
格林斯潘于1997年与记者安德里亚·米切尔结婚，2006年从美联储理事会退休。
当被《财富》杂志问及是否有总统曾在他担任美联储主席期间要求他降息时，格林斯潘表示从未收到过直接请求。
“但有几位曾暗示过这一点。不过我得说……从来没有政客打电话给我，要求我提高利率。”他调侃道。
Alan Greenspan, chair of Federal Reserve under 4 U.S. presidents, dies at age 100
June 22, 2026 / 7:32 AM EDT / CBS News
Alan Greenspan, an economist who served as chairman of the Federal Reserve under four U.S. presidents, died on Monday, his wife Andrea Mitchell said. He was 100.
Greenspan died at his home due to complications of Parkinson’s Disease, Mitchell said in a statement reported by NBC News, where she is the chief Washington and foreign affairs correspondent.
As one of the longest-serving Federal Reserve chairs in U.S. history, Greenspan’s reign at the central bank coincided with the so-called Great Moderation, a period of stability from the mid-1980s until 2007 that was marked by low inflation, stock market gains and strong economic growth.
At the same time, his tenure was punctuated by several financial crises, ranging from the 1987 stock market crash to the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s. In 1996, Greenspan famously coined the phrase “irrational exuberance” to describe bubbles fueled by unbridled investor optimism, alluding to that era’s craze for internet company stocks.
More controversially, Greenspan’s legacy is linked to the 2008 global financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession, even though the economic collapse occurred after he ended his final term as Fed chair in early 2006. Even so, some critics pointed to his “loose money” policies in the preceding years as contributing to the subprime housing crisis that ultimately caused the greatest U.S. economic collapse since the Great Depression.
Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan appears at a Senate hearing on Sept. 20, 2001. Tim Sloan/AFP via Getty Images
“The main post-crisis criticism of Mr. Greenspan was that he was a naive believer in market efficiency, failing to pop bubbles in the late 1990s or mid-2000s and failing to regulate the financial sector properly,” The Economist reflected in a 2017 essay.
For his part, Greenspan defended his decisions leading up to the Great Recession, tellingFortune Magazine in 2007 that he was the victim of “revisionist history” and that he had warned about subprime mortgages and other red flags brewing in the housing market.
As a younger economist, Greenspan told Fortune that he had discounted the role of human behavior in economics, saying he believed it was “not worth evaluating.” But he later realized that “there were very important missing variables in the forecasting system, and these all related to systemic activities of human beings,” Greenspan noted.
“You can count that human beings will become euphoric on occasion, and in deep distress and fear. What you can count on is that will never change,” he told the publication..
As Fed chair, Greenspan also became known for offering gnomic economic commentary that lawmakers, economists and investors scrambled to interpret. At the same time, he championed what he described as a shift away from less informative Fed statements prior to the 1980s, pushing for more transparency by central bankers.
“You don’t want to surprise the markets unless there is a purpose to it,” Greenspan said in a Federal Reserve oral history in 2009. “Too often in the past we would surprise markets with no particular purpose, which was not good.”
Greenspan was born in New York City on March 6, 1926, to Herbert Greenspan, a stockbroker, and Rose Greenspan, a homemaker, according to the New York Times. His parents divorced when he was five due partly to the financial stress stemming from the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash, the Times noted.
As a child, Greenspan exhibited mathematical talent, with the Times noting he could add three-digit sums in his head at age five. As a teenager, he pursued musical interests, studying the clarinet at Juilliard before studying economics at New York University, where he eventually earned a bachelors, master’s and doctoral degree.
While studying economics, Greenspan became a devotee of novelist Ayn Rand, with an NYU alumni magazine describing him as meeting regularly with her “objectivist salon” in her Manhattan apartment.
His first job was with the National Industrial Conference Board, where he analyzed demand for aluminum, copper and steel, followed by the creation of his economic consulting firm Townsend-Greenspan & Co., according to the Federal Reserve.
Later, he served as chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under President Gerald Ford and as a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board.
Greenspan was appointed Fed chair in 1987 by President Reagan, a job he was appointed to by three other presidents: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Greenspan, who married the journalist Andrea Mitchell in 1997, retired from the Federal Reserve Board in 2006.
Asked by Fortune Magazine if any president had ever asked him to cut interest rates while he was Fed chair, Greenspan said he never got a direct request.
“[B]ut a few hinted it. However, I will tell you… no politician ever called me up and asked me to raise interest rates,” he noted wryly.
