Fed Chairman Greenspan’s Quirky Past

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 25 -- As a young man, decked out in a canary yellowjacket, he blew a mean saxophone in jazz clubs around the country.

Now the world knows Alan Greenspan as the ever-serious FederalReserve chairman who has attained near cult status for shepherdingthe U.S. economy through its longest expansion in history. He isoften called the second most powerful man in the government.

The first biography of the 74-year-old chairman traces howGreenspan, raised in poverty by a single mother, transformedhimself from nerdy economic thinker to indispensable adviser tofive presidents.

This Is Greenspan’s LifeNew York writer Justin Martin said he was driven to write Greenspan: The Man Behind Money by the sense that Greenspan hasled a fascinating private life. The book, published by PerseusPublishing, will be out in November.

“I just knew there had to be a story there,” Martin said.

Martin interviewed 250 of Greenspan’s friends, from elementaryschool classmates to Greenspan’s ex-wife and his current wife, NBCnewswoman Andrea Mitchell. The book is not an authorized biography,but the Federal Reserve said Greenspan and Fed staffers helpedMartin check his facts.

Humble BeginningsGreenspan grew up in his grandparent’s cramped one-bedroomapartment in New York, where his mother Rose had moved afterdivorcing Greenspan’s father, Herbert, when Greenspan was 5.

The precocious Greenspan would sing the Depression-era anthem“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” to get spare change from hisuncle and would add up three-digit numbers in his head to impressguests.

At 9, Greenspan read Recovery Ahead, a book his absentfather, a sometime economic consultant, had written in praise ofPresident Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s economic programs.

In an inscription, the father expressed the hope that his son“may look back and endeavor to interpret the reasoning behindthese logical forecasts and begin a like work of your own.”