Alan Greenspan’s Bestseller

A fascinating dispute on modern economics — and the dominant role it plays in our politics - is currently taking place in America’s bookstores.

On one side is Alan Greenspan, whose The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World offers his usual free market uber alles philosophy, while attempting to rehabilitate his tattered image (which is worth about as much as the U.S. dollar these days).

On the other side is Naomi Klein, whose The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism offers an alternative economic history of the last 30 years and, using the war in Iraq as a mind-blowing example, pulls the curtain back on free market myths and exposes the forces that are really driving our economy.

Klein’s book is powerful and prophetic. Greenspan’s is pitiful and pathetic.

Yet it is Greenspan’s 500-page memoir that been getting all the attention, as almost no traditional media outlet has been able to resist what Josh Marshall has aptly dubbed “The Greenspan Embarrassment Tour.”