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The year was 1987, a date that shall be indelibly etched into the cornerstone of the foundation of the entire twentieth century. That was the year Alan Greenspan assumed the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve--and The International Economy magazine came into existence.

That's the good news for this publication: we arrived on the scene in the best of company. The bad news is what we said at the moment of Alan Greenspan's arrival. Our then-editor, Art Pine, as astute as they come in the international journalistic community, wasn't so sure about the new chairman's chances for success. "The departure of former Chairman Paul Volcker," he said, "has left a gaping hole in the international side. Alan Greenspan is a proven economist and a veteran domestic policymaker, but lacks Mr. Volcker's unparalleled experience and skill--as an international crisis manager." Later Art added that, "It's not clear yet whether Mr. Greenspan ... will be able to wield the power that he needs, either to press new initiatives abroad or to keep inflation in check at home."

Sorry about that, Alan.

With his retiring by the end of January, most publications have been describing Alan Greenspan as the greatest central banker in history. We concur. And of all his accomplishments, the one we applaud most was his intuitive feel by the late 1990s that the U.S. economy was about to experience a productivity expansion significantly above the historic norm. The Chairman could feel this in his finger tips. The result: Americans retained trillions of dollars of wealth that would have vanished had the Chairman followed the more conventional route in the conduct of monetary policy. No wonder most of the world, either openly or privately, finds the United States a bit too hard to take.

Still, there were doubters. By 2002, the financial press wasn't so sure of Greenspan's wisdom on the productivity issue. At one point, the Financial Times offered the nastiest of morsels: Greenspan's late 1990s enthusiasm for the productivity-expanding New Economy "played cousin to Enron's reckless levitation of itself during the same period." Indeed, at the time most European policymakers, sensing the U.S. economy was quickly slowing, predicted U.S. productivity growth would soon fall off a cliff. It never happened. Instead, the productive growth data continued strong, which prompted a high-level Brussels official to admit to TIE editors, "If this [productivity story] continues, a lot of us will look foolish. Greenspan will be vindicated."

So much more can be said about Greenspan's extraordinary performance. But rather than go on, we thought it better to share a sampling of some of the insights offered at the symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this past August. The outpouring of appreciation and admiration for Chairman Greenspan's work from the domestic and international economic policy and academic communities could have filled this magazine. We offer these insights along with our own message to the Chairman: Thanks for a job extraordinarily well done.