Por três vezes peguei e devolvi à prateleira da Fnac essa autobiografia do Greenspan. Por que não levei? A grana está curta e há uma lista enorme de prioridades. Enquanto o livro não vem para minhas mãos vou controlando a ansiedade com informações de segunda mão, como essa resenha do Times Literary Supplement:

The Greenspan years

The autobiography of America’s central banker - logical positivism and political extortion

Robert B. Reich

Alan Greenspan
THE AGE OF TURBULENCE
Adventures in a new world
529pp. Allen Lane. £25.
978 0 7139 9982 2
US: Penguin Press. $35. 978 1 59420 131 8

How did a self-described “lifelong libertarian Republican”, son of Jewish immigrants and follower of the controversial 1950s philosopher and author Ayn Rand, become the most powerful force in the American economy for most of the past two decades – including the entire duration of the Clinton administration? As Alan Greenspan reveals in his memoirs, his success was due, first, to being in the right place at the right time. He was appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, America’s central bank, at a time when Keynesianism – the belief that government could wisely stabilize the economy through spending and taxing – was becoming discredited, and when America began relying as never before on its central bank to do that job. Greenspan was also fortunate to enter government just as Republicans were in the ascendant. He joined Richard Nixon’s Presidential campaign in 1968 and Nixon appointed him to chair the President’s Council of Economic Advisors. In 1987, Ronald Reagan appointed him chairman of the Federal Reserve. Above all, as his memoir reveals, Greenspan’s power lay in his deep understanding of the way the American economy actually works, as opposed to how it works in theory. As America’s central banker, Greenspan eschewed standard economic models in favour of hard data. His empiricism had deep roots – as a young man he had been deeply influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein and logical positivism. “The world would become a better place”, Greenspan learned, “if people focused exclusively on what was knowable and important, which was precisely logical positivism’s aim.”