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In other times, yesterday’s comments by Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, would have shaken markets: the flow of savings from developing countries which had fuelled the current global liquidity boom was “about halfway through” and a “one-shot thing”.
But yesterday the markets barely trembled, as positive mergers-and-acquisitions activity and some strong earnings figures more than outweighed Mr Greenspan’s gloomier outlook.
“When you are no longer the head of monetary policy, 80 per cent of its market relevance has gone,” said David Ader, a strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital. “Greenspan is of marginal interest as a prognosticator now.”
Mr Greenspan, 81, has made millions since retiring from the US central bank in February last year, holding forth on global economics in a lucrative, sometimes controversial speaking career.
The former Fed chief made $180,100 a year at the end of his 18-year tenure. Now he can command $150,000 (�09,000, £73,000) for a single speech – and he has made dozens of appearances since leaving office. He is reaping profits from the written word as well, receiving an advance believed to be more than $8m for a forthcoming book about his experiences at the Fed.
Public speaking has become a huge business in the US since the previous Fed chairman, Paul Volcker, left office in 1987 and went into investment banking. With the growth and shift upmarket of the conference business, and a ban on current office-holders taking speaking fees, former officials can make a mint.
Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior cashed in, and Bill Clinton is the current prime example of earning power on the speaker circuit. Even well- regarded journalists can and do pull in as much as $50,000 or more each time.
The six-figure A-list stars include people such as Colin Powell and, until he pulled back to concentrate on his presidential campaign, Rudy Giuliani – and, of course, Mr Greenspan.
“When he talks, you can hear a pin drop,” said one member of a recent audience that included dozens of chief executives. “Everybody pays attention and takes notes. He still matters.”
Within days of leaving office, the former Fed chief spoke to a private gathering of hedge-fund managers, organised by Lehman Brothers. Leaked reports of his remarks were taken to mean that interest rates might go up. Talking about the US economy so soon after leaving the central bank, and before his successor, Ben Bernanke, had established himself, raised eyebrows, but he breached no rules in doing so.
Through his office, Mr Greenspan declined to comment for this article. Even now, over a year after leaving the Fed, his comments have found an eager audience. Last month he was blamed for a drop in the value of the South African rand after commenting that capital markets were underestimating the cost of risk in emerging markets.
His warning in May – via teleconference to a meeting in Madrid – that Chinese stock markets were overheating helped trigger an 8 per cent drop in the price of foreign-held shares in the country’s companies, and even dented US markets.
The effect was even clearer at the end of February when his comments about the possibility of a US recession contributed to a sharp stock market sell-off that began in China but saw the year’s gains in US markets wiped out in four days.
Mr Bernanke’s words steadied markets during that turmoil, suggesting he has won credibility – albeit with a more consensual style.
Moreover the current Fed chairman’s comparatively benign view of the economic outlook seems to be in the ascendant. He appears inclined to think it is not his predecessor’s fault that investors take his comments so seriously.
However, Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, issued a thinly veiled criticism of the former Fed chairman in May, saying he was grateful his own predecessor had not “been in the newspapers and on the radio all the time, commenting on what the monetary policy committee is doing”.
Since he left the US central bank, Mr Greenspan’s remarks have become much more definitive – in contrast to his often convoluted and confusing phraseology while in office.
That style of obfuscation was developed, he said in an interview this year, to avoid sensitive questions during congressional testimony. When different newspapers reported his remarks with opposite interpretations, he said: “I’d succeeded.” |
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发表于 2007-7-29 09:27:15
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