Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, two of Ben Bernanke’s linear ancestors as chairmen of the Federal Reserve, have been in the news quite a bit lately. Yet, we rarely hear about William McChesney Martin, a magnificent public servant who was Fed chairman during five presidencies and to this day holds the record for the longest tenure: 19 years.
Chairman Martin had a way with words. And he had a twinkle in his eye. It was Bill Martin who wisely and succinctly defined the Federal Reserve as having the unenviable task “to take away the punchbowl just as the party gets going.” He did himself one up when he received the Alfalfa Club’s nomination for the presidency of the United States. I suspect many here tonight have been to the annual Alfalfa dinner. It is one of the great institutions in Washington, D.C. Once a year, it holds a dinner devoted solely to poking fun at the political pretensions of the day. Tongue firmly in cheek, the club nominates a candidate to run for the presidency on the Alfalfa Party ticket. Of course, none of them ever win. Nominees are thenceforth known for evermore as members of the Stassen Society, named for Harold Stassen, who ran for president nine times and lost every time, then ran a tenth time on the Alfalfa ticket and lost again. The motto of the group is Veni, Vidi, Defici—“I came, I saw, I lost.”
Bill Martin was nominated to run and lose on the Alfalfa Party ticket in 1966, while serving as Fed chairman during Lyndon Johnson’s term. In his acceptance speech,[1] he announced that, given his proclivities as a central banker, he would take his cues from the German philosopher Goethe, “who said that people could endure anything except continual prosperity.” Therefore, Martin declared, he would adopt a platform proclaiming that as a president he planned to “make life endurable again by stamping out prosperity.”
“I shall conduct the administration of the country,” he said, “exactly as I have so successfully conducted the affairs of the Federal Reserve. To that end, I shall assemble the best brains that can be found…ask their advice on all matters…and completely confound them by following all their conflicting counsel.”