SAY IT AIN’T SO, ALAN. Say you have no intention of retiring. Sure, you are 76 years old, and your term is due to expire in 2004. So retire now, you are being told, and give the president an opportunity to name a replacement before the 2004 campaign season is upon us. Get out while the getting is good. And be remembered as the man who bowed out gracefully after slaying, or at least mortally wounding, the business cycle. When you were confirmed by the Senate on August 3, 1987, the nation’s output of goods and services was worth less than half of what it is today. And the Standard & Poor’s index of 500 stocks stood at about 320 (and would quickly fall to 225, wiping out $1 trillion in wealth and greeting you with your first crisis); even after recent batterings that have sweated a lot of irrational exuberance out of share prices, the S&P index is now well over 900, a trebling since you took the reins of the Federal Reserve Board. So why not cash in now, and leave a hero, taking credit for the enormous increase in wealth, productivity, and output? The answer is easy: because stepping down is not in your interest. I know: You are accustomed to hearing that you have to stay because the national interest demands a steady, experienced hand on the economy’s tiller during this period when capitalism itself has been brought into ill repute by a handful of capitalists, a war on terror is revving up, and the fiscal situation borders on the chaotic. As your friends at the New York Fed would say, fuggedaboutit. The economy got on pretty well for a couple of hundred years before you came along, and it will do so after you leave. After all, you know as well as any other student of Ayn Rand that it is the millions of individual, hard-working Americans toiling long hours, earning and spending with glee, and keeping the mall tills ringing and the construction crews busy building bigger houses who, along with risk-taking entrepreneurs, drive the economy. No, don’t stick around out of any overblown sense of your own importance. Instead, remain in the chairman’s seat because it is in your interest to do so. And by pursuing your interest, you will be led as if by an invisible hand . . . well, you of all people know the rest of Adam Smith’s brilliant observation about the responsible and humane pursuit of self-interest. Consider the alternatives. Would you be happy roaming the world, Clinton-like, in pursuit of the next speaking fee and the sound of at least two hands clapping? Fortunately, you don’t have the legal bills that awaited Bill Clinton, and therefore are under no compulsion to emulate him and the ghost of good King Hamlet, “doom’d for a certain term to walk the night” in search of dollars (they’re depreciating anyway) and approbation. Even more important: Audiences who pay a lot to hear you speak would expect clarity, and after years of raising obfuscation to a fine art, simple, declarative sentences are no longer within your reach. Consider, too, that in retirement you might be tempted to join one of those appalling senior tennis tournaments that are designed to lure aging athletes for whom still another round of applause more than offsets the twinge they must feel at having lost their panther-like agility, and gazelle-like speed. Or you might do something rash, such as try to find more time for your beloved clarinet. But Woody Allen and Len Garment have already snapped up the best bookings, and the repertoire has gone to hell since the days of Artie Shaw, Louis Armstrong, the Dorseys, and Woody Herman. Finally, if you quit now you will have abandoned one of your lifelong causes. It is now clear that Congress and the president have neither the wit nor the will to make the Social Security system viable in the long run. Only individual Americans, by refusing to retire at 62 or 65, can do that. As well they should, since the retirement age was set when it was likely that a worker would be dead shortly after laying down his pick, shovel, and other tools. These days, we are living long enough to be able to work well into our eighth decade. What we need is someone to set an example, to show that we can work longer and still be happy, that by living longer we need not revenge ourselves on our children by becoming long-term burdens on them. So do stick around, not only for this term but for at least one more, at the end of which you would be a mere lad of 82, far younger than the still-productive Milton Friedman. Unlike with presidents, neither the voters nor the Constitution stands in your way. And speeches, tennis, and the clarinet can’t be nearly as fulfilling as keeping the economy on an even keel during an upheaval in the system of corporate governance and our war on terror. Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London).
