The news of his passing comes from his wife, Andrea Mitchell, NBC reports.
Greenspan had been head of the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) for 18 years before resigning in January 2006.
Nominated by Ronald Reagan
Before his appointment as Fed chief, he worked as a musician in a jazz orchestra with saxophone legend Stan Getz, but after studying economics he began working as an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He was nominated as Fed chief by President Ronald Reagan.
A little over two months after taking office as Fed chairman, Greenspan faced an acute crisis when Wall Street crashed on Monday, October 19, 1987, in what came to be known as Black Monday.
He was also the central bank governor during the dot-com crash and in the turmoil following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Deregulation and bubbles
Greenspan was praised by many for long periods of sustained growth, stock market records, low unemployment and stable inflation in the United States. The S&P 500 index nearly quadrupled in value during Greenspan's 18 years as Fed chief, and U.S. growth averaged 3.5 percent per year, while unemployment was below 4 percent, as low as in April 2000.
Greenspan was among the first to recognize the importance of technology for productivity in the United States, which allowed the economy to grow faster than we thought it could even without inflation, said Roger Ferguson, who was deputy Fed chairman from 1999 to 2006, to Bloomberg.
But critics have labeled deregulation during Greenspan's years as Fed chief a major explanation for the U.S. housing bubble and the subsequent collapse of Lehman Brothers and the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.
In congressional hearings in 2008, he described the financial crisis as a "credit tsunami" that caused him to question, self-critically, his belief in deregulated markets.
