Alan Greenspan was born in a decade not unlike the
1990s. During the 1920s, the stock market was booming, the good
times were rolling along, people had more than enough money to
burn,and many believed the bubble would never burst.But burst it
did,and when it finally deflated,the hopes,dreams,and fortunes of
millions of people were dashed to smithereens.
The 1990s ended differently.In 1999,stocks turned in their fifth
straight year of returns in excess of 20 percent, with technology
shares actually doubling in value during the final year ofthe decade.
While many stood on the sidelines predicting that this bubble
would also burst, millions of speculators ignored them and grew
rich buying the stocks of companies with no hope of turning a
profit in the foreseeable future. Most observers gave the credit for
this decade of unprecedented prosperity to the man who had been
controlling the nation’s money spigot for the past thirteen years,
Alan Greenspan.