Description:

On eight Tuesdays each year, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan convenes a small committee to set the short-term interest rate that can move through the American and world economies like an electric jolt. As much as any, the committee's actions determine the well-being of every American. The availability of money for business or consumer loans, mortgages, job creation, and overall national economic growth all flows from those decisions. Perhaps the last Washington secret is how the Federal Reserve and its enigmatic chairman, Alan Greenspan, operate. In 'Maestro,' Bob Woodward uses his proven interviewing and research techniques to take you inside the Fed and Greenspan's thinking. We listen to the Fed's internal debates as the American economy is pushed into a historic ten-year expansion while the world economy lurches from financial crisis to financial crisis. Greenspan plays a sometimes subtle, sometimes blunt behind-the-scenes role. He appears in Maestro up close as never before -- alternatively nervous and calm, plunging into mathematics one moment and politics the next, sceptical, dispassionate, always struggling, often alone.