Business

Greenspan lowest-paid former Fed chief

What’s mumbling worth?

Alan Greenspan, whose cheap money policies helped spur the global financial crisis, has the lowest speaking fees of the three former Federal Reserve chairmen, according to a research report.

The Ronald Reagan-appointed economist has a minimum speaking fee of $40,000, according to estimations in the report out Friday.

That’s about half of what Paul Volcker, Greenspan’s predecessor at the Fed, commands for a speech.

While neither man has to worry about his next meal, each must be a bit envious of Ben Bernanke, who left the Central Bank post in February.

The bearded former Fed chairman reportedly pocketed $250,000 for one 40-minute speech in Abu Dhabi in March.

That’s more than his 2013 salary of $199,700.

Greenspan’s reportedly low minimum for a speech shows, perhaps, how much his contributing to the credit crisis tarnished his reputation as an oracle of the markets.

Almost immediately after leaving his job at the Fed, he reportedly got $250,000 to give a speech at Lehman Brothers, the bank that collapsed two years later at one of the lowest points of the crisis.

Greenspan served as the Fed’s head for almost 20 years, from 1987 to 2006.

During that time, he was regarded as a financial genius, and media reports would speculate on whether interest rates would move based on the amount of paper he’d carry to board meetings in his briefcase.

He also would sometimes speak so softly or in such double-speak that people struggled to understand him.

The 88-year-old husband of NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell would also use puzzling language — like his “irrational exuberance” — to say that markets are too expensive.

Volcker’s roughly $75,000 minimum fee comes after the so-called “Volcker rule” made its way into the 2010 Dodd-Frank banking regulations.

The controversial rule, which took effect this year, bans banks from trading their own funds — something Volcker argued was one of the main causes of the credit crisis.

Elizabeth Ashwell, a spokeswoman for Alan Greenspan’s consulting company, didn’t return an e-mail seeking comment.