ALAN GREENSPAN is used to delivering sermons. Mostly, as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, he preaches in Washington, where he takes his text from the bible of price stability and where his word is treated as gospel. Yesterday the world’s most influential economist swapped pulpits and came instead to a 19th-century church in the seaside town of Kirkcaldy, where he spoke about the impact of free- market ideas on the world’s economies.

Dr Greenspan gave every appearance of enjoying his surroundings. He was there for two good reasons. The first and most obvious was sitting on the platform beside him. Gordon Brown, his pupil and protégé, whose late father, John, was the Presbyterian minister at St Bryce’s Kirk, had invited him to Scotland on behalf of Fife College, the organiser of the lecture.

Mr Brown said that it was a privilege to welcome “the world’s greatest economist” to “the church where I grew up”. He suggested to his audience that, since Scottish Presbyterians were not famous for their lightness of touch, “this could be the most optimistic lecture ever delivered in this church”.

Dr Greenspan’s other reason for coming was Adam Smith, the 18th-century economist. If Dr Greenspan is the 20th- century father of modern inflation management, then Smith is the founder of modern economics, and since he was born and brought up in Kirkcaldy it is not surprising that a series of lectures in his name has become a major feature of the annual programme.

An audience that included a cross-section of the great and good of Scottish business and Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, had come to listen to a man who can, with one word, move the world’s markets.

Dr Greenspan, 78, chose to concentrate on the ideas of Adam Smith, whose most famous work, The Wealth of Nations, was, he said, “one of the great achievements in human intellectual history”. Smith had set out the basic rules that governed the free market and the role of productivity in improving standards of living.

“More than two centuries of economic thought have added little to those insights,” he observed. Smith’s ideas had survived communism, central planning and market regulation, to become “the sole remaining effective paradigm for economic organisation”.

Mr Brown leant forward as Dr Greenspan turned briefly to Africa and the poverty that still grips that continent. “Regrettably,” he said, “much of today’s developing world would appear familiar to our forebears. Pestilence is present in the form of Aids, and life expectancy . . . is not much different from what it was in most of the world two centuries ago.” The Chancellor nodded.

Smith’s ideas, Dr Greenspan said, lay behind the US strategy, the loosening of regulations, the flexibility of its economy, the ability to respond to setbacks and to recover. He made no reference to the growing US deficit or the weakness of the dollar. Perhaps he felt that a church was no place for loose comments.

As he himself once observed: “If I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said.” Only once did he let slip a halfcomment that may have caused Mr Brown to flinch. Economic flexibility, he said, meant not having to depend on “policymakers’ initiatives, which often come too late or are misguided”.

And he paid tribute to one of Smith’s more famous phrases — his reference to the “invisible hand” that regulates economies despite the selfishness of competition. Individuals, Smith said, are driven by private gain, but are “led by an invisible hand” to promote the public good, “which was no part of their intention”. Dr Greenspan offered no explanation for how the invisible hand might operate today. He may, however, have had himself in mind.

A standing ovation — US style — greeted his speech. But this was Scotland, not America. So the vote of thanks made a pointed reference to “the need for wealth distribution as well as just wealth creation”. It won spontaneous applause.

FINANCIAL FREE-THINKING

Smith’s first book, Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, took as its theme the standards of ethical conduct that hold society together

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