"...Townsend-Greenspan was unusual for an economics firm in that the men worked for the women (we had about twenty-five employees in all). My hiring of women economists was not motivated by women's liberation. It just made great business sense. I valued men and women equally, and found that because other employers did not, good women economists were less expensive than men. Hiring women did two things: it gave Townsend-Greenspan higher-quality work for the same money, an it marginally raised the market value of women."Note that Townsend-Greenspan was Alan Greenspan's company founded in 1954 and was dissolved in 1987 when Greenspan became Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Here is a fantastic quote from the chapter titled Irrational Exuberance that makes reference to the time Greenspan was having his honeymoon in Venice.
(page 181) "Venice, I realized, is the antithesis of creative destruction. It exists to conserve and appreciate a past, not create a future. But that, I realized, is exactly the point. The city caters to a deep human need for stability and permanence as well as beauty and romance. Venice's popularity represents one pole of a conflict in human nature: the struggle between the desire to increase material well-being and the desire to ward off change and its attendant stress.
America's material standard of living continues to improve, yet the dynamism of that same economy puts hundreds of thousands of people per week involuntarily out of work. It's no surprise that demands for protection against the forces of market competition are on the rise - as well as nostalgia for a slower and simpler time. Nothing is more stressful for people than the perennial gale of creative destruction. Silicon Valley is without question an exciting place to work, but its allure as a honeymoon destination has, I would guess, thus far gone largely unrecognized."
These two paragraphs are like an elixir to the palate of urban development. And must be mentioned Greenspan's penmanship is superb in expressing his respect for others as well as (although untold) his respect for and fondness of his wife Andrea Mitchell. In keeping with his affection towards his wife describes her as "...looked ravishing, even though she'd been working at her usual intense pace and had the flu." (page 203)
In reference to the memorial of President Ford who he most admired "It was a tribute to this genial soul, but also evidence of American's thirst for the civility and politics that Ford represented and that had long since departed." (page 245)
"...three important characteristics influencing global growth: the extend of competition domestically...the quality of a country's institutions that make an economy work; and the success of its policy makers..." (page 251)
He also quotes Amartya Sen "In the terrible history of famines in the world, no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press. We cannot find exceptions to this rule, no matter where we look." (page 253)
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