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• Position: Alan Greenspan services as chairman of Federal Reserve

The year was 1987, a date that shall be indelibly etched into the cornerstone of the foundation of the entire twentieth century. That was the year Alan Greenspan assumed the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve--and The International Economy magazine came into existence.

That's the good news for this publication: we arrived on the scene in the best of company. The bad news is what we said at the moment of Alan Greenspan's arrival. Our then-editor, Art Pine, as astute as they come in the international journalistic community, wasn't so sure about the new chairman's chances for success. "The departure of former Chairman Paul Volcker," he said, "has left a gaping hole in the international side. Alan Greenspan is a proven economist and a veteran domestic policymaker, but lacks Mr. Volcker's unparalleled experience and skill--as an international crisis manager." Later Art added that, "It's not clear yet whether Mr. Greenspan ... will be able to wield the power that he needs, either to press new initiatives abroad or to keep inflation in check at home."

Sorry about that, Alan.

With his retiring by the end of January, most publications have been describing Alan Greenspan as the greatest central banker in history. We concur. And of all his accomplishments, the one we applaud most was his intuitive feel by the late 1990s that the U.S. economy was about to experience a productivity expansion significantly above the historic norm. The Chairman could feel this in his finger tips. The result: Americans retained trillions of dollars of wealth that would have vanished had the Chairman followed the more conventional route in the conduct of monetary policy. No wonder most of...