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One of the most important intellectual relationships in the life of Alan Greenspan, the prominent former central banker who died Monday, was with author Ayn Rand, whose 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged has become a perennial favorite among conservatives and which the Library of Congress named as one of the books that has shaped America.
The two first met when he was in his mid-twenties and she was in her forties, and already well-established via her 1943 novel The Fountainhead, which had been a best-seller. They were introduced through Greenspan’s then-wife, the Canadian art historian Joan Mitchell. Mitchell was a close friend of the wife of Nathaniel Branden. Branden was Rand’s protege and longtime lover.
Greenspan and Mitchell wed in 1952, but divorced within a year. By contrast, Greenspan’s relationship with Rand was far more lasting: they remained friends until her death in 1982.
Through the Branden connection, Greenspan joined Rand’s “Collective,” a small group of friends and thinkers who would gather regularly at Rand’s midtown Manhattan apartment to discuss politics, world events and ideas. He became a Collective regular.
According to Greenspan’s 2007 memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, Rand nicknamed Greenspan “the undertaker” early on in their friendship, thanks to his penchant for dark suits and his sober demeanor.
His dour reputation was at odds with his early artistic pursuits. He was a talented musician. Before pursuing an economics degree at New York University, he enrolled at Juilliard to study clarinet, and as a teenager played in a swing band alongside jazz legend-to-be Stan Getz. His musical tastes were just as conservative as his politics, however: in his memoir, he dismissed almost every form of post-big band popular music as “on the edge of noise.”
Greenspan wrote for Rand’s magazine, The Objectivist, including contributing an influential essay on the gold standard in 1966 that was later reprinted in her 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 who stood with him, along with Rand’s husband, Frank O’Connor, and Greenspan’s mother Rose Goldsmith.
“Ayn Rand became a stabilizing force in my life,” he wrote in his memoir. “She was a wholly original thinker, sharply analytical, strong-willed, highly principled, and very insistent on rationality as the highest value. In that regard, our values were congruent – we agreed on the importance of mathematics and intellectual rigor.”
