It was reported this week that on Thursday, in a speech before the Economic Club of New York, 91-year old former Chairman of the Federal Reserve (hereafter the ‘Fed’) Alan Greenspan stated that the Dodd-Frank Act 2010 was the ‘worst legislation since Nixon’s wage and price controls of the 1960s’, and that we ‘ could do away with all financial regulation – almost all of it – if we did one thing, and that is raise the capital requirements of banks ’. The debates about the merits of such a statement will only be touched upon in this post because, as with everything of this nature, the analysis could stretch to volumes. So, for this post, the focus will be on the effect of Greenspan over the years and, more importantly given the current climate, the effect that Economists can have in shaping the direction of society. Alan Greenspan’s thinking about financial regulation is simple, as demonstrated by the contents of the speech. In it he discussed how raising the capital requirements ...