Andrew Ferguson's review of Alan Greenspan's new book is very, very good. On the subject of Ayn Rand:
This was in the late 1950s. By then, Rand had published her two thick, preposterous novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and stood poised on the brink of international stardom. Her creepy philosophy of Objectivism, placing the self at the center of the moral universe, was being enthusiastically embraced, as it still is, by tens of thousands of pimply teenage boys in the dreamy moments between fits of social insecurity and furious bouts of masturbation. As her cultish fame spread, Rand wanted to keep tabs on her most intimate acolytes. Of these Greenspan was the most promising and, by all appearances, the most normal. Which worried her.
And on "Greenspeak":
[Greenspan] is highly self-amused on the subject of "Fedspeak," the jargon-laden, zig-zagging syntax in which he entombed his public pronouncements. Fedspeak from the mouth of any other public official would be called evasion, euphemism, misdirection, or obscurantism. Greenspan calls it "constructive ambiguity," as though clarity of expression would have made his job nearly impossible.
And maybe it would have, but there's another possible explanation: a deep-seated mistrust of language--a disinclination to phrase ideas in concrete terms. Fedspeak is a particularly floppy form of prose. Take a wooly noun, attach it to a nebulous verb, thrust both at an undefined object, and whammo: You, too, could be Green-span giving his Humphrey-Hawkins testimony before a congressional committee. In Fedspeak, nouns that stand for real things or definable ideas and verbs that describe discrete acts disappear in a cloud where aspects, factors, and dynamics will shape, impact (sometimes positively, sometimes negatively), implement, or enable a series of outcomes, probabilities, or conditions. Try it: I would venture to say, Senator, that the various dynamics in question might negatively impact the relevant probabilities. No one will know what you're saying. But if you're chairman of the Fed, no one will dare complain, either. They'll think you might get mad and blow up their 401(k) plans. Somehow.[...]
Economics is an inexact business, of course, and tracing effects back to causes can be difficult, especially when it comes to official actions of the government. But Fedspeak allows the Fedspeaker to claim credit or avoid blame, with equal plausibility, when policies or pronouncements turn out well or badly. That's what's constructive about the ambiguity! Fedspeak is a strategy that preserves not only the independence of the Federal Reserve but also the reputation of its chairman.
