Early Life and Education
Greenspan was born in the Washington Heights area of New York City. His father Herbert Greenspan was of Romanian-Jewish descent and his mother Rose Goldsmith of Hungarian-Jewish descent. His father worked as a stockbroker and market analyst in New York City.
Greenspan attended George Washington High School from 1940 until he graduated in June 1943, where one of his classmates was John Kemeny. He played clarinet and saxophone along with classmate Stan Getz. He further studied clarinet at the Juilliard School from 1943 to 1944. Among his bandmates in the Woody Herman band was Leonard Garment, Richard Nixon's Special Counsel. In 1945 Greenspan attended New York University where he earned a B.S. degree in economics summa cum laude in 1948 and an M.A. degree in economics in 1950. At Columbia University, under the tutelage of Arthur Burns, he pursued advanced economic studies but dropped out.
U.S. economist Michael Hudson once fired Alan Greenspan, in 1966, 21 years before he became chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve; "he was known as a hack that always gave ... his clients what they wanted instead of something actual". In 1977, Greenspan obtained a PhD degree in economics from New York University. His dissertation is not available from the university since it was removed at Greenspan's request in 1987, when he became Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. However, Barron's has obtained a copy, and notes that it includes "a discussion of soaring housing prices and their effect on consumer spending; it even anticipates a bursting housing bubble".
Read more about this topic: Alan Greenspan
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“Although good early childhood programs can benefit all children, they are not a quick fix for all of society’s ills—from crime in the streets to adolescent pregnancy, from school failure to unemployment. We must emphasize that good quality early childhood programs can help change the social and educational outcomes for many children, but they are not a panacea; they cannot ameliorate the effects of all harmful social and psychological environments.”
—Barbara Bowman (20th century)
“The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As for the graces of expression, a great thought is never found in a mean dress; but ... the nine Muses and the three Graces will have conspired to clothe it in fit phrase. Its education has always been liberal, and its implied wit can endow a college.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)