"Alan Stuart Blinder" is an United States/American economist. He serves at Princeton University as the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs in the Economics Department, and vice chairman of The Observatory Group. He founded Princeton’s Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies in 1990. Since 1978 he has been a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also a co-founder and a vice chairman of the Promontory Interfinancial Network, LLC. He is among the most influential economists in the world according to RePEc/IDEAS/RePEc,[http://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html Economist Rankings at IDEAS] and is "considered one of the great economic minds of his generation."

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And the maestro surely wielded the chairman's baton with extraordinary skill. His stellar record suggests that the only right answer to the age-old question of whether it is better to be lucky or good may be: both.

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His performance as chairman of the Fed has been impressive, encompassing, and overwhelmingly beneficial - to the nation, to the institution, and to the practice of monetary policy.

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His flexibility, his unwillingness to get stuck in a doctrinal straitjacket that becomes dysfunctional may be his greatest strength.

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While there are some negatives in the record, when the score is toted up, we think he has a legitimate claim to being the greatest central banker who ever lived.

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I think they're right on the curve but in danger of being behind the curve.

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While Alan Greenspan may have enjoyed more than his share of good luck during his storied tenure as Fed chairman, he was also confronted with a wide variety of challenges that required subtlety, a deft touch and good judgment.

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The employment numbers easily give the Fed reason to pause, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are finished with raising rates. They will want to see more evidence of slowing, both in the employment numbers and in other areas of the economy.

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The most important thing is that strikes don't last forever. The economy is normally quite resilient and comes bouncing back.

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