In eight Tuesdays each year, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan convenes a small committee to set the short-term interest rate that can move through the American and world economies like an electric jolt. As much as any, the committee's actions determine the economic well-being of every American. The availability of money for business or consumer loans,mortgages, job creation and overall national economic growth all flows from those decisions.

In eight Tuesdays each year, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan convenes a small committee to set the short-term interest rate that can move through the American and world economies like an electric jolt. As much as any, the committee's actions determine the economic well-being of every American. The availability of money for business or consumer loans,mortgages, job creation and overall national economic growth all flows from those decisions.

Perhaps the last Washington secret is how the Federal Reserve and its enigmatic chairman, AlanGreenspan, operate. In Maestro, Bob Woodward uses his proven interviewing and research techniques to take you inside the Fed and Greenspan's thinking. We listen to the Fed's internal debates as the American economy is pushed into a historic 10-year expansion while the world economy lurches from financial crisis to financial crisis. Greenspan plays a sometimes subtle, sometimes blunt behind-the-scenes role. He appears in Maestro up close as never before--alternatively nervous and calm, plunging into mathematics one moment and politics the next, skeptical, dispassionate, always struggling-often alone. As Greenspan tells himself, "If you're not nervous, you shouldn't be here."

Maestro traces a fascinating intellectual journey as Greenspan, an old-school anti-inflation hawk of the traditional economy, is among the first to realize the potential in the modern, high-productivity new economy--the foundation of the current American boom. Woodward presents the Greenspan years, 1987-2000, as a gripping narrative, a remarkable portrait of a man who has become the symbol of American economic preeminence.

PREFACE

PROLOGUE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

EPILOGUE

GLOSSARY

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX