Money world

Watching Alan Greenspan in his new incarnation is a strange experience. Greenspan 1.0 served as Federal Reserve Board chairman for an entire generation, being oracular, talking in what we (and now he) called Fedspeak, rarely saying anything on the record outside of carefully choreographed public appearances.

But now we have Greenspan 2.0. He ended his 18-year run as head Fed in 2006, leaving with a rep as perhaps the best central banker in the history of money. Now, amid a worldwide financial meltdown that just won’t go away, Greenspan finds himself yapping in public and defending his record in op-ed pieces - whole new roles.

I always knew that Greenspan was capable of delivering a coherent English sentence, because although I wrote skeptically about him - or maybe because I was skeptical - I got to talk to him on the rare occasions when I felt I needed to do it quick payday. I had to agree to let him speak off the record, and found myself dealing with a superb spinmeister. He managed to influence the thinking of even a skeptic like me without having to take responsibility for what he said.

He could be extremely charming. In a briefing with some of us at Newsweek, my former employer, Greenspan went on about the first name he and I share, which his parents spelled with one "l" fewer than mine did. Talk about flattering me! Years later I discovered during a conversation with Allan Hubbard, then director of President Bush’s National Economic Council, that Greenspan had used the same Alan/