The Pope of Wall Street In his latest book, Wall Street Capitalism: The Theory of the Bondholding Class, FSU economist Ray Canterbery has a favorite villain—the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. He spares Alan Greenspan, who he dubs "the Pope of Wall Street," precious little criticism in his scathing denunciation of what he sees as a dangerously unbalanced monetary mentality threatening the U.S. economy. One might suspect that Canterbery's treatment of Greenspan reflects a fundamental clash of ideologies, and it does. Greenspan was once an unabashed protégé of novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, whose best-known work, The Fountainhead, exalts a public-be-damned entrepreneur. Canterbery's favorite novel is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which exposes the hollowness of a wealth-obsessed society. Selected Greenspan barbs from Wall Street Capitalism: Alan Greenspan...has enjoyed the power of a medieval pope while the Federal Reserve System itself has an independence akin to that of the Vatican. As [Bill] Clinton was made to realize, when he stepped into the White House, he became the tenant of Alan Greenspan. Nothing unnerved Greenspan quite as much as a shrinkage in the Reserve's army of the unemployed. Those who say that the age of "trickle-down" economics...ended with the Volcker-Reagan experiments...have not been paying attention...Next, we see how Alan Greenspan—with a fervor that would have embarrassed Ronald Reagan–embraced the bond market strategy. If the Washington media had kept as close an eye on Alan Greenspan as they did on Monica Lewinski, this final assault on traditional American capitalism might not have happened. The traders expect recession because the Reserve has had a phenomenal postwar record in its creation. The stock traders sold if they expected that Greenspan expected that the bond traders would expect inflation followed by the recession created by...Greenspan's expectations about their expectations. While Greenspan was fretting over inflation in commodity prices and upward "pressures" on wages, his policies–aimed at pleasing the bondholding class–assured a sustained bull market in financial assets. By now, the Reserve's chair had, in quick succession, set off two rallies inside a speculative bubble of his own creation. Once fretting about 'irrational exuberance,' Greenspan now saw 'craziness' in the financial markets as not only rational but 'good.' People placing bets on companies with no earnings is what capitalism is all about! Following Alan Greenspan as he danced through the financial markets was like watching someone delicately walking through a minefield but stepping on every mine.