He went on to work as an ethical advisor to President Nixon, as an appointee to the new Peace Committee established under Henry Kissinger, and was appointed chairman of the US Federal Reserve in 1987 in what was believed to be President Reagan?s first public display of the Alzheimer?s disease to which he would ultimately succumb.

Sixty seconds after his chairmanship at the Fed was announced, the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its largest ever points fall in history. Several school parties to the New York Stock Exchange were inadvertently clubbed to death by the bodies of falling stockbrokers. It was at this point that Greenspan uttered the sentence that would usher in three decades of unparalleled stability and calm to the financial system:

"The Fed affirms today its readiness to provide unlimited amounts of dollars to support Wall Street no matter what."

Greenspan is noted for the breadth, creativity and variety of his policy responses, whether it was slashing interest rates following the 1987 "Greenspan? Crash, slashing interest rates during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-8, slashing interest rates ahead of the "Millennium Bug? (a small Ailanthus webworm moth that was born in late 1999), or slashing interest rates after the dotcom bust of 2001. Greenspan would also occasionally slash interest rates just because he felt like it.

He became known for a certain fussily prolix and complex speaking style that some attributed to an old duffer disguising a policy primarily associated with slashing interest rates by means of talking impenetrable nonsense. He showed those critics who accused him of whoring himself out to Wall Street interests on his retirement by taking up paid consulting roles with PIMCO, Deutsche Bank and Paulson & Co.

Greenspan wrote a memoir titled "The Age of Turbulence: Has Anyone Seen My Soap ?? which was published in 2007, shortly after he forecast a thousand year sunlit upland for the US property and mortgage derivative market. Greenspan apparently wrote the book whilst soaking in his bathtub, a habit he employed ever since an accident in 1971 when he incurred a near-fatal duelling injury at the hands of Ron Paul. He came in for guarded criticism when he advised homeowners to take out Adjustable Rate Mortgages in 2004 when the fed funds rate was at an all-time low of 1%. He then hiked rates to 5.25%.