Alan Greenspan, the ultimate suit who ran the Federal Reserve and controlled the entire money game for almost two decades, has died at 100 years old. His passing on Monday, June 22, 2026, was confirmed by the central bank. His wife, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, let everyone know he passed away from complications of Parkinson's disease, calling him brilliant and kind. Right on cue, the Fed put out a glowing statement talking about how Greenspan helped build their "credibility." But if you ask anybody on the block who got wiped out by the 2008 crash, they’ll tell you that "credibility" didn't keep the lights on or pay the rent when his policies blew up the neighborhood.

Greenspan was the definition of an academic insider. He got his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD in economics all from New York University, then spent thirty years running a private consulting firm before he got the keys to the Federal Reserve. He had all the degrees and credentials on his wall, but when it came to how real-world economics actually worked for regular folks trying to get by, he was completely out of touch. He was looking at spreadsheets while people were trying to survive.

This man held down the Fed chair from 1987 to 2006, running the show under four different presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. His 18-and-a-half-year run was just five months short of the all-time record set by William McChesney Martin, who ran the bank from 1951 to 1970. The politicians loved him because he kept the money printer going, making the economy look hot on paper and earning him the fancy nickname "Maestro." He got bipartisan love from three Republicans and one Democrat because his policies kept the stock market jumping.

But the whole thing was a total illusion. Right after Greenspan stepped down in 2006, the housing market completely cratered. That collapse triggered the 2008 financial crisis, plunging the entire country into the Great Recession, the worst economic disaster since the 1930s Great Depression. While the corporate giants got massive bailouts, regular working families lost their homes, their jobs, and their entire life savings.

When the government did their official investigation, they brought the receipts and didn't hold back. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission flat out stated that "more than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve [chair] Alan Greenspan and others … had stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe." Basically, Greenspan let the big banks write their own rules and trust-system their way through, and they ended up driving the entire economy off a cliff.