Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom

Perhaps the last Washington secret is how the Federal Reserve and its enigmatic chairman, Alan Greenspan, operate. In Maestro, Bob Woodward uses his proven interviewing and research techniques to take you inside the Fed and Greenspan's thinking. Woodward presents the Greenspan years as a gripping narrative, a remarkable portrait of a man who has become the symbol of American economic preeminence.
"ON JANUARY 20, 2001, a new president takes the oath of office. He assumes the presidency in a Greenspan era. Just as the 1992 presidential election was about fixing the economy and cutting the federal budget deficit, the 2000 election was about how to use a projected surplus of at least several trillion dollars. The expectations, even the very definition, of the new administration protecting Social Security, expanding health care, improving education, revitalizing the military and cutting taxes will be contingent on that surplus. Whether it materializes is yet to be seen, but the inherited economic conditions for everyone from the next president to any citizen are in many respects the Greenspan dividend. Greenspan is slated to remain chairman of the Federal Reserve until 2004. Not only is he a major figure in the world’s economic past, he is central to its future. He has been frank enough to stand before the new and amazing economic circumstances that he helped create and in the end declare them a mystery. It is impossible to account fully for the continuing high growth, record employment, low inflation and high stock market. This is my effort, only a beginning, to write the story of how and why we got there."