WI: Bill Clinton Replaces Alan Greenspan

Alan Greenspan, a once celebrated conservative economist, served from 1987 to 2006 as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Lauded in his time, Greenspan has since been blamed for the 2007 financial crisis (along with many others) due his support for extremely low interest rates that encouraged a housing bubble in the mid-2000s. What's surprising about Greenspan was that despite his Republican affiliation, Bill Clinton kept him on board as Fed Chairman in the 1990s. What if Clinton had decided to replace Greenspan? What effect would this have on the American economy and the housing market? Would the 2007-09 financial crisis still happen?
 
First question: who might Clinton have plausibly replaced him with?

Clinton generally appointed centrist to conservative economic advisors with close ties to the private sector. For example: Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Rubin, and Lawrence Summers all served as Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton. So if Clinton were to replace Greenspan, he/she would most likely be a Democrat but by no means a liberal one.
 
From an LAT article at the time, looks like Greenspan's reappointment (in 1996) was due to a few factors: strong growth, desire not to rock the boat in an election year, and the GOP Senate expressing opposition to a few of Clinton's mooted potential replacements for Greenspan. Perhaps if Dems held the Senate in 1994, Clinton would have appointed someone else. Looks like Felix Rohatyn was the leading alternative.

Only one week ago, Clinton appeared to show some dissatisfaction with the Fed's growth policy when--in his first open criticism of the bank as president--he called for a more vigorous debate about the best rate of sustainable growth. He declared that there could be wide social benefits if the growth rate were coaxed to 2.7% or 2.8% per year, for example, from the 2.5% that it has averaged for 25 years.

And Clinton had been publicly debating appointment of investment banker Felix Rohatyn, an outspoken advocate of faster growth, before Senate Republicans made clear that they would reject that choice.

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Facing an election year and a liberal wing of the Democratic Party that was not altogether happy with Greenspan, the White House toyed with the idea of combining the inflation-conscious chairman with a more liberal vice chairman.

Other possibilities included, in addition to Rohatyn, Peter Kennan, an international economist at Princeton; Robert Shapiro, a Clinton economic advisor in 1992; and Eugene Ludwig, former comptroller of the currency.

But it has been clear for months that Greenspan probably would remain as chairman, White House officials said. "The presumption was from the beginning that it would be difficult to make a change there," one senior official said.

The way it's written it's a little ambiguous as to whether these other names (besides Rohatyn) were people also floated for chair or just for vice chair.
 
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