Anstelle eines Nachrufs

 von Manfred Müller

 

 

... ein Video von Murray Rothbard über den gestern, über 100-jährig, verblichenen Alan Greenspan, lange Jahre Chef der Federal Reserve und damals das "Orakel von Delphi" für Börsianer weltweit:

 

 

Rothbard ist manchmal kaum zu verstehen mit seinem Gebrabbel, deshalb ist das Transskript des Videos sehr hilfreich:

[Question about Greenspan] What do you think about Alan Greenspan? How did he go from being … from studying under Mises …

Rothbard: Yeah, that’s very interesting. Greenspan, well he was never … he was always a Keynesian, even in the old Randian Period. He had no interest in Austrian economics at all, and no interest in economic theory. He was basically a forecaster. He was a lousy forecaster, interestingly enough.

When he got his Fed post a couple years ago, he had to give up its forecasting business because the forecasting firm—Townsend &  Greenspan—admittedly, they were lousy forecasters, and so without Greenspan, there’s no point in having it. In other words, Greenspan was sold not as forecasting but as access the power. Like Kissinger—why did Kissinger & Associates make $10 million a year, or whatever it is, because he knows all these bigshots and can get them in with the bigshots, that’s high-fallutin’ lobbying.

And so, how so did he rise to fame and fortune? I don’t quite know. I mean, if you ever … I’ve met Greenspan, and I think he’s the least charismatic person I’ve ever seen practically. He’s got the persuasiveness of a dead mackerel. So I don’t know how he got … it’s difficult to figure out. He got in with I guess the Ford administration, … And the interesting thing is he gets in, he got into the Council of Economic Advisors and recently the Fed. The New York Times would write about him about say, “well he has these peculiar philosophical views, like gold standard and Ayn Rand etc., but don’t worry about it folks, he’s really a pragmatist.” That’s the tip-off—regardless of these views, they’re sort of in the closet; he doesn’t care about them; in practice, he’s like everybody else. Which of course is true.

But you also have the unique … see he has the advantage or the establishment of having conservative or Randian whatever “aura,” so he can get away with stuff, a conservative will back him. And so he can do the the same stuff everybody else is doing. It has sort of an aura or right-wing connection. I think that’s probably the usefulness. But basically he’s like Volcker or the other people—he’s a Volcker without a cigar, is what he is. He’s probably better than a lot of other guys.

The interesting thing how the conservative Keynesians like Volcker and Greenspan are better than the Reaganite supply-siders who want more inflation, they want a lot more inflation, a lot lower interest rates, … they’re holding a line, such as it is. It’s too glad because Greenspan saved the Social Security system for a century, by increasing taxes of course. So he has a lot to answer for… But in contrast to … in contrast to … he’s less bad than the Reaganites, is all you can say for him.

But the interesting thing is he follows the Randian strategic view. The Randian strategic view is—see most people think of Randians as being libertarian  with a slight quirk. They’re not really libertarians politically at all, because what they want is, before you can do anything politically, before you can cut taxes, eliminate price controls or anything—before you do anything, you have to have everybody agree on Randian philosophy—free will, and concept and percept and all the other crap—so before you can do anything, have any coalition with anybody, you have to everybody agree on all the Randian metaphysics. Well since you’re not going to have that, in practice you have just regular statists.

Dass Greenspan eine geraume Zeit lang dem Kreis um Ayn Rand angehörte, wissen heute vermutlich nur mehr die Wenigsten. Aber es war eben immer nur "sort of in the closet", nichts, was Greenspans tatsächliche Tätigkeit in der Fed beeinflusste.

 

Ob ihm nach seinem Abgang gedämmert hat, was er mit seiner lockeren Geldpolitik angerichtet hat? Kann sein, manche spätere Statements lassen es vermuten. Als überzeugter Atheist, der er war, wird ihn dies aber nicht allzu sehr tangiert haben Er hatte sein Leben erfolgreich gelebt, wurde nie angeklagt, hatte nie üble Konsequenzen seiner Aktionen zu tragen — also: was soll's!

 

Eine systemimmante Figur ist gestorben. Lange Zeit bewundert, nach seinem Abgang allmählich vergessen. Falls er nun in einem Jenseits (oder auch nur in seiner Todesstunde) auf sein Handeln zurückblicken kann bzw. muss: ist er dafür zu beneiden?

 

Unser geschätzter LePenseur pflegt derartige rhetorische Fragen mit dem Satz zu quittieren: "Die Frage zu stellen, heißt sie beantworten."