Author: Alan Greenspan

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Pub. in: September, 2007

ISBN: 0143142607

Pages:  

Measurements:  

Origin of product: USA

Order code: BA00820

Other information: Abridged edition
ISBN-13: 978-0143142607

Important information: This is a pre-order title scheduled to be released on
September 17, 2007. The actual shipment is estimated to be 3-9 weeks from this date. We'll keep you updated on the shipping status. Thank you for your understanding.

MSL Customer Service Team

This pre-order item is hot! It ranks #6,281 in books out of Amazon.com as of June 3, 2007.

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman whose every vague word financial markets hung on for decades, finally feels he can be frank. In this new book, he has choice words about his former White House bosses and comes clean about his "Fedspeak."

Greenspan, 81, said he wrote The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World in longhand in the bathtub - an old habit after a back injury years ago. His goal, he said, was "to see if I could figure out why sometimes things turned out exactly the way I expected, sometimes ridiculously wrong."

The book, to be published in September, focuses on his years at the helm of the Fed. Greenspan said he became eloquent in what he terms "Fedspeak" because he learned that "certain answers - no matter how you phrase them, no matter what you do - have market effects."

But in response to questions from Mitchell, he offered an uncharacteristically blunt report card on the presidents he knew and worked for: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush and Bill Clinton. He didn't comment on the current President Bush.

In working with Nixon during his candidacy, Greenspan said he realized "I was dealing with a split personality. It was fascinating to watch, but very scary." And he reveals why he ultimately did not join Nixon's White House: "I was very uncomfortable with him," he said.

Of Reagan, who appointed him to the Fed in 1987, Greenspan said, "People thought of him in many respects as a dunce. He wasn't." Yet, Greenspan said it was difficult to brief Reagan on the details of monetary policy because the president had a fundamental economic philosophy and wasn't going to stray from it.

Of interest to the traders who still hang on his every word more than a year after he retired as Fed chairman, Greenspan said his book's final chapter will use events of the past to frame his outlook for the future.

He told Mitchell that he expects new leaders in France, Germany and Britain to "mould a new Europe, which is going to start to move in a more vibrant way than it has in recent years." He also briefly touched on interest rates, saying that interest rates are low in the U.S., but they are low all over the world.

And as a keynote speaker at BookExpo America, the book-publishing industry's annual trade show in New York, Alan Greenspan and his wife Mitchell, shared some revelations of the new book:

- Reflecting on his frequent bouts of Congressional testimony, Greenspan admitted to intentional obfuscation. "It was important not to answer certain questions," he said, because the "markets are watching" and might misinterpret or overreact to a Fed chairman's comments.

- Greenspan foresees a Europe that will begin to move forward "in a way that it hasn't" under the leadership of newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Britain's Gordon Brown, and Germany's Angela Merkel. Greenspan said that he had gotten to know Sarkozy, who served as France's finance minister, quite well in 2004 and that the two had "bonded."

- The author discussed his impressions of the various U.S. Presidents under whom he served. Richard Nixon, he said, suffered from "a split personality" that Greenspan found unsettling. Gerald Ford was, he said, "a marvelous man" who didn't really have the drive to be President. Ronald Reagan, he said, was "not a dunce" as many have suggested, but that he simply "did not get into complexities." And Greenspan told of a meeting with Bill Clinton that he found "absolutely fascinating," as they discussed a wide range of policy matters.

- The key lesson of 9/11, said Greenspan, is that the U.S. economy is far more flexible and resilient that he'd ever imagined. Immediately after the terrorist attacks, he recalled, the economy plummeted, but it quickly stabilized.

- Under goading from Mitchell, Greenspan admitted to writing much of his book in longhand while sitting in the bathtub. "O.K., I'm another Archimedes," he said.

Part Memoir, Part Economic Analysis
The presentation was intended to pique booksellers' interest in Greenspan's volume, which is embargoed and won't be available until September.

Greenspan and Mitchell were introduced by Penguin Group President Susan Petersen Kennedy, who declared the former Fed chief to be "the man," adding that "people from 18 to 85 are waiting for him to deliver" his book. The Pearson unit reportedly paid Greenspan an advance of $8.5 million, the second-highest advance for a nonfiction book, just behind former President Bill Clinton's $10 million advance for his 2004 memoir. Penguin's fall catalog says the book is 640 pages long and describes it as a combination memoir and assessment of the global economy.

Target readers: Whoever interested in the world economy, particularly US economy, and the future of our society should read this book.