Alan Greenspan has died at the age of 100. He served as the chair of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. He was a disciple of libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand; a leading advocate for deregulating banks; and a proponent of so-called trickle-down economics. Greenspan was widely blamed for fueling economic inequality in the United States. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote on Monday, “If any single person was responsible for the financial crisis of 2008, it was Greenspan. That crisis — the worst collapse since 1929, which led to the worst recession in decades, in which millions of Americans lost their jobs, savings, and even their homes — resulted from the deregulation of Wall Street that Greenspan advocated.” Greenspan later admitted there was a fundamental flaw in his free market ideology.

Greenspan also pushed for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He later wrote in his memoir, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Click here to see a debate we hosted in 2007 between Alan Greenspan and Naomi Klein.