RIP Alan Greenspan: you were charming, powerful, and wrong | Robert Reich

The former Federal Reserve chair was a smart guy - but he had a huge blind spot. Here's what I wish I'd said to him

Alan Greenspan has died at the age of 100.

My students don't recognize his name, but you probably do. When he was chair of the Federal Reserve - for more than 18 years, from 11 August 1987 to 31 January 2006 - he not only ran the US (and most of the world's) economy but was also in many ways the most powerful person in the US.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK