I'll let you folks onto a secret I've learned about Greenspan. First of all he's about as far from a socialist as you can get, he used to be an inner member of
Ayn Rand's circle, and if you are not familiar with her works she's about the purest capitalist you will ever find.
Greenspan even wrote some essays for some of her books and its pretty clear that like Rand he favored the gold standard. If you have followed the price of Gold under Greenspan's rule you will notice that if anything its gone down. I figure despite all the double talk and gobbledegook language meant to obscure what his methods are, his method is simple: tie the amount of money to the amount of gold so that in effect if not in law, the US is following a gold standard.
Lots of folks think the purpose of the FED is to tinker with the money supply so you can take the oscillations out of the economy. That would require perfect knowledge of the future and nobody has that, so in effect all you do by trying to control the business cycles is introduce more noise, not less. The most sound thing you can do is tie money to something real, like gold, and that's just what Greenspan has done, which is why inflation has been consistently low under his watch and why four presidents have decided to keep him.