New Delhi, June 25 -- For all the encomiums penned after Alan Greenspan passed away on Monday at the age of 100, a dispassionate view of his career points to the perils of placing mortals on pedestals. On scrutiny, feet of clay are easily exposed.

So it was with the man who served as chair of the US Federal Reserve for 18 years from 1987 till he retired in 2006, just two years before the West's financial crisis of 2008. To put this in perspective, his term at the Fed's helm overlapped that of five Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governors, R.N. Malhotra, S. Venkitaramanan, C. Rangarajan, Bimal Jalan and Y.V. Reddy.

Greenspan's longevity as Fed chair owed as much to his skill as a central banker as to his ability to navigate shifting politic...