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<DIV><FONT color=#000000>As I mentioned in a previous post, Alan Greenspan is
one of this year's most intriguing people according to People magazine. I don't
know if order of appearance matters, but he's after Oprah and before Leonardo
DiCaprio.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT
size=2>-------------------------------------------------------------------</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>From the December 28th/January 4th special double
issue.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>People magazine</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>no byline</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>Alan Greenspan may be one of the world's most
influential men. But he once slyly commented that public life had taught him how
to "mumble with great incoherence." Or as he also likes to say:
"If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I
said." All the same, when this canny operator speaks, people listen
closely. As chairman of the Federal Reserve System, he heads the body that sets
key U.S. interest rates, which in turn drive rates on credit cards, mortgages
and car loans, which in turn move the big wheels of the U.S. economy. A cross
between oracle and king, he doesn't just drop hints about the future. He has the
power to make it happen.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>In 11 years as Fed chairman, Greenspan has helped
render inflation as distant a memory as *Dynasty*, sustaining eight lustrous
years of economic boom. But his toughest test by far came in 1998, when bumpy
economies in Russia, Asia and Latin America tripped up Wall Street's bulls and
left the U.S. vulnerable to recession. Greenspan persuaded his Fed colleagues to
support three timely interest-rate cuts, a nimble reversal of his long-held
impulse to raise rates to combat inflation. For a time at least, that helped
return stocks (and your retirement funds) to their giddiest summer
highs.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>Not bad for a guy who does his best work while soaking
in the tub each morning for 90 minutes because of a bad back. His wife, NBC News
correspondent Andrea Mitchell, 52, surely the only person in the world to call
him "sweet pea," says his obscure public manner is no mystery:
"Alan is basically shy." Maybe, but Greenspan is a player, and in more
ways than one. In the 1940s he played sax and clarinet with a swing band -- but
as the son of a stockbroker, he also handled the bands finances. Later he picked
up three economics degrees, started an economic consulting firm, held a
succession of appointive government posts and entered a short-lived 1952
marriage with Joan Mitchell, who became a celebrated painter.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>At 72 he's one of Washington's most tireless
partygoers, a man linked with such potentates as Barbara Walters before he began
dating Andrea in 1985. And still he finds time to calm troubled waters.
"Greenspan deserves all credit for guiding the U.S. economy through the
most tumultuous period in probably 60 years," says CNNfn anchor Lou Dobbs.
So what if he mumbles? When he faced his biggest challenge yet, his ability and
resolve were clear.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT
color=#000000>----------------------------------------------------</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>I do have to agree with People magazine's choice of
Lorrie Moore's Birds of America, a collection of short stories, as one of the
top 10 books of '98. The following is from her short story Community
Life:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>"I mean, you probably always wanted to be a
librarian, right?"</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2> <FONT size=3>She looked at
the crooked diagnals of his face and couldn't tell whether he was serious.
"Me?" she said. "I first went to graduate school to be an English
professor." She sighed, switching elbows, sinking her chin into her other
hand. "I did try," she said. "I read Derrida. I read Lacan. I
read *Reading Lacan*. I read 'Reading *Reading Lacan*'--and that's when I
applied to library school."</FONT></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>