Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chair Who Steered 18 Years of U.S. Monetary Policy, Dies at 100

Alan Greenspan, who served as chair of the Federal Reserve for 18 years under four U.S. presidents, died Monday, June 22, 2026, at the age of 100. His tenure covered a sustained stretch of American economic expansion before the 2008 financial collapse — a period that came to define both his legacy and the case against it. In a 2013 interview, he reduced his entire theory of markets to a single warning: break down trust, and the economy implodes.

Eighteen Years at the Center of U.S. Economic Policy

Greenspan's run at the Federal Reserve, spanning four presidential administrations, made him one of the longest-serving central bankers in American history. He presided over an era of sustained growth during which his statements on monetary conditions could move markets globally. That era closed with the 2008 financial crisis, which forced a broad reassessment of the assumptions that had underpinned his time in office.

In an October 2013 profile for CBS's "Sunday Morning," Greenspan spoke with journalist Anthony Mason about what those years in public office had taught him — including how to account for irrational human behavior as a variable in market prediction, a task he approached as both analytical and intuitive.

Trust as the Load-Bearing Structure

The clearest distillation of Greenspan's thinking on markets came not from a model but from a single sentence. In the 2013 "Sunday Morning" conversation, he argued that the American economic system rests on trust — and that once broken, it does not merely weaken. "You break trust down, and the system implodes," he told Mason.

That framing — confidence as structural rather than psychological — was characteristic of how Greenspan discussed markets across his public life. He consistently argued that measuring irrational human behavior was as essential to understanding the economy as any balance sheet figure.

Andrea Mitchell and a Life Beyond the Fed

Greenspan was married to NBC journalist Andrea Mitchell. In the same 2013 profile, Mitchell spoke about her husband's deep attachment to writing — a discipline that, by her account, absorbed him well beyond his years in office.

Greenspan leaves behind a legacy divided between two verdicts: the architect of a long American expansion, and the regulator who did not see 2008 coming. Economists and historians will be working through that tension for years.