Bruce Ramsey has an interesting article in the Seattle Times titled “Maestro Greenspan wasn’t conducting all that much,” about Greenspan’s new memoir and his legacy as Fed Chairman.
He cites a passage from the memoir confirming a rumor I’d heard in the 1990s, which is that Greenspan’s goal was to informally peg the dollar to the value of gold. From the article:
He joined Richard Nixon’s campaign in 1968 as an adviser, and when he went to the Fed, he undertook to run the system as it was. He confesses in the book to a nostalgia for the gold standard, but he never campaigned for it. …
Greenspan’s job was to control inflation, and the numbers suggest he did. For years, it seemed he was running monetary policy as if it were a gold standard, and he confirms it in his book.
See the full article for more.