Greenspan's Fraud: How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy.

Greenspan's Fraud: How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy. By Ravi Batra. Palgrave/Macmillan, 278 pages. $24.95.

You can't blame Alan Greenspan if he chooses not to read this book.

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For all the encomiums that have been written about Greenspan in the 18 years that he has been chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ravi Batra's new book is, to say the least, contrarian. It's the proverbial search for the idol's feet of clay.

Taking on the most influential figure in the world money markets isn't something most writers would tackle. But Batra, an economics professor who has written a number of glass-half-empty books--such as The Great Depression of 1990 and The Crash of the Millennium--isn't exactly a Pollyanna.

In his preface, Batra promises to show "another face" of Greenspan, who he sees as a skillful power broker but a man of "intensely extremist views" whose policies have shifted trillions of dollars from the middle class and enriched the well-to-do. He also accuses the Fed leader of fraud--both financial and intellectual--though by financial he doesn't talk about anything illicit, but tax-cut policies, for instance, that he argues have threatened the Social Security trust fund and the safety net for millions.

Actually, Batra accuses Greenspan of playing both sides of the table--currying favor with whatever president was in power at the time. As much as the Fed chief sided with the tax-cutting supply-siders, he writes, "the tax rises of 1982, 1983, 1990 and 1993 infuriated the supply-siders, but had Greenspan's blessings."

Most people who follow the markets know that Greenspan is often deliberately inscrutable, which makes any "agenda" hard to decipher. Batra's book, which mixes historical analysis of Greenspan's career with more theoretical musings about stock market bubbles and similar topics, is often little short of a screed. At times, it seems to be written more out of personal animus than a nuanced set of arguments.