Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand’s Friendship: NPR

One of the most important intellectual relationships in the life of prominent former central banker Alan Greenspan, who died on Monday, was with the writer Ayn Rand, whose novel she published in 1957. Atlas Shrugged has become an enduring favorite among conservatives and has been named by the Library of Congress as one of the books shaped America.

The two first met when he was in his mid-twenties and she was in her forties, and were already well established through their 1943 novel. fountainheadWhich was a best-seller. They were introduced through Greenspan’s then-wife, Canadian art historian Joan Mitchell. Mitchell was a close friend of Nathaniel Brandon’s wife. Brandon was Rand’s protege and longtime lover.

Greenspan and Mitchell married in 1952, but divorced within a year. In contrast, Greenspan’s relationship with Rand was far more enduring: they remained friends until her death in 1982.

Through the Brandon connection, Greenspan joined Rand’s “Collective”, a small group of friends and thinkers who gathered regularly at Rand’s midtown Manhattan apartment to discuss politics, world events, and ideas. He became a mass regular.

According to Greenspan’s 2007 memoir, Age of Turmoil: Adventure in a New WorldRand had given Greenspan the nickname “The Undertaker” early in their friendship, thanks to his penchant for dark suits and his cool demeanor.

His old reputation was in contrast to his early artistic activities. He was a talented musician. Before earning an economics degree at New York University, he enrolled at Juilliard to study clarinet, and as a teen played in a swing band with jazz legend-to-be Stan Getz. However, his musical tastes were as conservative as his politics: in his memoir, he rejected almost every form of post-big band popular music. “At the Shore’s Edge.”

Greenspan wrote for Rand’s magazine, The Objectivist, including contributing an influential essay gold standard in 1966 which was later republished in his book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. When he was sworn in as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Ford Administration, it was Rand stood with himWith Rand’s husband, Frank O’Connor, and Greenspan’s mother, Rose Goldsmith.

“Ayn Rand became a steadying force in my life,” she wrote in her memoir. “She was a completely original thinker, acutely analytical, strong-willed, highly principled and very insistent on rationality as the highest value. In that respect, our values ​​were the same – we agreed on the importance of mathematics and intellectual rigor.”