Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman whose policies shaped the lives of millions, has died at 100. To workers in the industrial North, his name is synonymous with the deregulation and financialisation that hollowed out their communities. Greenspan’s legacy is a mixed inheritance: low inflation but stagnant wages, soaring asset prices but crumbling public services.
He was a master of the markets, but for those on the kitchen table end of the economy, his tenure marks the beginning of a long, grinding squeeze. Unions weakened, manufacturing jobs fled, and the price of bread became a daily worry for too many. He will be remembered not just for the boom of the 1990s, but for the seeds of inequality that followed.