Greenspan as Fed Watcher

What makes some red in the face is that he can speak about Fed policy and the economy just days after leaving the Fed when his insights are most relevant and freshest and impact markets....It's great if you were among the lucky few to attend, as the rest of the B-list money managers are only now just hearing about the meeting. David Gilmore, FX Analytics

It appears that the ex Fed Chair has ruffled a few feathers with his jump into the private sector. Some, like Mr. Gilmore above, are moaning about asymetric information release, or not being on the inside. Others are worried that Greenspan might release critical Fed information. I think they have little to fear on that front. Greenspan's skill as Fed watcher ended once he stopped making the calls.

Before Mr. Greenspan was Fed chair, he ran a consulting firm called Townsend-Greenspan which.... well I'll let Murray Rothbard have the floor:

I found particularly remarkable the recent statements in the press that Greenspan's economic consulting firm of Townsend-Greenspan might go under, because it turns out that what the firm really sells is not its econometric forecasting models, or its famous numbers, but Greenspan himself, and his gift for saying absolutely nothing at great length and in rococo syntax with no clearcut position of any kind.

As to his eminence as a forecaster, he ruefully admitted that a pension-fund managing firm he founded a few years ago just folded for lack of ability to apply the forecasting where it counted- when investment funds were on the line.

I think Mr. Greenspan's new venture, Greenspan Associates, will follow the same path, eventually. The more people see Greenspan outside of the Fed, the more they will see the man behind the mystique.