COMMENTARY

Greenspin

By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY
March 10, 2006; Page A18

"Penguin executives emphasized that the book . . . would present Greenspan's unvarnished opinions for the first time."

-- The Washington Post

"One of the duties of a Fed Chairman is periodically to schlepp up to Capitol Hill to testify before various Senate or House committees, consisting of largely ignorant people. But I enjoyed these little excursions on several levels.

"First, the senators were always very deferential, and would call me 'Mr. Chairman' and agree with anything I said. They would plant metaphorical kisses on certain smooth portions of my anatomy, and I found this to be generally agreeable. Second, it was a chance to try out whatever new phrase I had devised to describe the general state of the economy, such as 'irrational exuberance' or 'continued growth.' Typically, I would come up with these chestnuts in the shower or while smoking a cigar after sexual intercourse.

"On the ride up to the Hill, I would sometimes entertain fantasies about 'letting it all hang' out and saying, 'Senator, these fluctuations in the price of molybdenum on the Tokyo stock market frankly tighten my sphincter. We may well be standing on the brink of an abyss from which there is no returning. I would advise the government of the United States to make peace with God and prepare to die.'

"But at the last minute, my nerves would fail me and instead I would offer some blancmange on the order of 'Over the course of the next seven quarters I would anticipate very minor readjustments in the world price of molybdenum which I feel at this point in time do not warrant any strenuous measures.' And everyone would go, 'Ohhhhhhhhh,' as if a large Alka-Seltzer tablet had been dropped into the economic waters and the headlines would read WORLD BREATHES SIGH OF RELIEF or GREENSPAN SAYS, 'DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY.' After a while, it almost made me contemptuous. Sometimes, looking back, I wish I had said, 'Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen, because we're in for a crash that will make 1929 seem like a day at the spa.' It would have been amusing to watch the blood drain from their faces.

"I particularly enjoyed the quadrennial kabuki dance with whatever president was in office. Four presidents worked under me during my 19 years in office and they understood very well that the road back to the Oval Office, so to speak, went through me, not David Letterman or Jay Leno.

"A year before re-election, I would start to get hand-written notes from the incumbent. 'Caught you on C-SPAN. You look fabulous! Have you lost weight?' Or 'Can we shave a point off the prime -- just for old time's sake? Please? Be a sport. Would you like to come up to Camp David this weekend? Bo Derek is coming.'

"George Soros called me one day and said, 'How you like deutsche marks?' (That's the way he speaks. He's foreign.) I like George, but he had not been sufficiently deferential to me at the recent Aspen Institute conference, so I said, 'George, I love love love deutsche marks,' knowing that he would go long on them. He did, and he lost his shirt. (He can afford a new one.) What I hadn't counted on was that it would destroy the European economy for three years, and precipitate a crisis in the Balkans, but on balance it was worth it. He certainly never called me again for foreign currency tips."

Mr. Buckley is author of "Thank You For Smoking" (Random House Paperbacks, 2006), the movie version of which opens in theaters next week