Alan Greenspan - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Greenspan was born in the Washington Heights area of New York City. His father Herbert Greenspan was of Romanian-Jewish descent and his mother Rose Goldsmith of Hungarian-Jewish descent. His father worked as a stockbroker and market analyst in New York City.

Greenspan attended George Washington High School from 1940 until he graduated in June 1943, where one of his classmates was John Kemeny. He played clarinet and saxophone along with classmate Stan Getz. He further studied clarinet at the Juilliard School from 1943 to 1944. Among his bandmates in the Woody Herman band was Leonard Garment, Richard Nixon's Special Counsel. In 1945 Greenspan attended New York University where he earned a B.S. degree in economics summa cum laude in 1948 and an M.A. degree in economics in 1950. At Columbia University, under the tutelage of Arthur Burns, he pursued advanced economic studies but dropped out.

U.S. economist Michael Hudson once fired Alan Greenspan, in 1966, 21 years before he became chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve; "he was known as a hack that always gave ... his clients what they wanted instead of something actual". In 1977, Greenspan obtained a PhD degree in economics from New York University. His dissertation is not available from the university since it was removed at Greenspan's request in 1987, when he became Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. However, Barron's has obtained a copy, and notes that it includes "a discussion of soaring housing prices and their effect on consumer spending; it even anticipates a bursting housing bubble".