22 June—Alan Greenspan, who died today at 100, could have made a career in music (he studied clarinet at Juilliard) but chose instead to follow his father into economic consulting. He was appointed to five terms as Chair of the Federal Reserve by four presidents, first by Ronald Reagan in August 1987, then by George Bush 41, Willy Clinton, and George Bush 43. And of course he was known as Maestro.

Having led the Fed through two recessions and the 11 September aftermath, Greenspan retired from the Fed in January 2006 on the best of terms and with a stellar reputation, so he didn’t get to be reappointed by Bush or Barack Obama. That may have been to his—and the world’s—advantage, since his Ayn Rand-influenced laissez-faire policy of deregulation is considered by many to have been largely responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown, the most severe banking and general economic disaster since the Great Depression. But let’s not dwell on negatives. And he admitted his error. But you wonder how one non-autocrat could have so much power.

Alan Greenspan’s working relationship (and notable bipartisan rapport) with Clinton and his administration—and after Greenspan’s retirement from the Fed as a private consultant and commentator with Barack Obama and his administration—was not only pragmatic, prioritizing compromise and what observers call institutional stability over ideological purity, but appears to have been genuinely amicable, despite obvious ideological differences. The good good old days.

On the other hand, although Greenspan and Donald Trump were on common ground about things like tax cuts, with Greenspan regularly praising Trump’s huge corporate cuts, and general deregulation, they clearly differed on little things like populism, isolationism, free trade, immigration, and—of course—the independence of the Federal Reserve. Greenspan called Trump’s populism “a shout of pain” rather than a workable economic strategy, for instance. And he said that Trump’s tariff-based protectionist trade wars, particularly against China, would lower the standard of living of average Americans. Was he right or was he right?

While Greenspan generally avoided criticizing Trump in public, he observed on more than one occasion that he’d rather turn off his hearing aid than listen to the ignoramus-in-chief discuss the strength of the U.S. dollar. Ahead of the 2016 election, while not naming Trump directly, he described the political environment as the worst he’d ever known and kvetched that the country was being undermined by crazies. Was he right or was he right?

After the 2016 election Greenspan headlined, “I couldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was not my candidate.” Was he right or was he right? But with 20/20 hindsight . . .