Looking at Greenspan's Long-Lost Thesis

WE'VE FOUND IT -- A COPY OF ALAN Greenspan's long-lost Ph.D. thesis! Or, more accurately, a rare copy of the elusive document, in Lassie-Come-Home-fashion, found us.

The dissertation, written in 1977 when Greenspan received his coveted degree from New York University, had been tucked away on a professor's sagging bookshelf for 31 years.
[greenembarassed]
"There is no perpetual motion machine which generates an ever-rising path for the prices of homes," wrote Greenspan in his dissertation.

There are only two known copies: the Maestro's own and the one we viewed. As far as we can tell, Barron's is the only news organization ever to have seen the thesis since a third and now missing copy was removed from the public shelves of NYU's Bobst library at Greenspan's request in 1987, the year that Ronald Reagan appointed him chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Glancing at the document, we momentarily felt like Indiana Jones at the dramatic moment in which he discovers the Lost Ark of the Covenant.