Don't Mess With Taxes

Recently-retired Federal Reserve Board chief Alan Greenspan just sold his memoirs to Pearson's Penguin Press for a cool $8 million.

Although Greenspan and crew nudged rates up as his tenure wound down, he was chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee during a period of historically low interest rates. Those rates, in turn, helped feed the house-buying frenzy and associated escalating home values we've seen for the last few years (and blogged here and here).

Greenspan's book advance puts him up there with both of the Clintons ($10 million for Bill, $8 million for Hillary) and Pope John Paul II ($6-$7 million).

Alan's reminiscences will be out sometime next year. Me, I'll wait for the movie. I hear the working title is "Get Exuberant!"

Woody Allen is the obvious choice to portray Greenspan.

But given Hollywood's incessant desire to entice younger moviegoers into Cineplexes, I fear some producer may come up with enough cash to get Leo to don face putty and shave most of his hair. He did, after all, have his most recent success playing another old, very rich guy that a lot of people thought was crazy.

Just don't, dear God, let them cast Britney or Jessica as Andrea Mitchell!