No replacement for Greenspan yet in sight

JACKSON HOLE, Wyoming - US Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan this weekend made his final appearance as headliner at one of the world's most exclusive clubs -- with five months left in his post and no successor yet in sight.

As Greenspan closed out the Kansas City Fed's annual symposium with brief but unusually frank remarks to a select crowd of about 130 from all over the globe, accolades were pouring in for his 18 years of service.

But corridor buzz was about the difficulty of replacing him when he steps down at the end of January and how soon the White House will get around to making its choice.

The sooner the better, most participants said.

"Financial markets are going to become uneasy about this because Alan Greenspan has become an oracle," said former Fed Governor Lyle Gramley, now an adviser to Stanford Washington Research Group, recalling the tension before Greenspan was picked in 1987 to replace former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.

This year's Jackson Hole gathering was devoted to "The Greenspan Era," one in which the 79-year-old chairman has come to virtually personify the Fed and its power.

"He has been on the job so long, and has been so dominant and so successful, that few Americans any longer draw a distinction between 'Alan Greenspan' and 'the Federal Reserve'," said a paper by former Fed Vice Chairman Alan Blinder and fellow Princeton University academic Ricardo Reis.

The three most regularly mentioned potential replacements -- Glenn Hubbard, a past adviser to President George W. Bush; Harvard economist Martin Feldstein; and former Fed Governor Ben Bernanke who now is a White House adviser -- were at the weekend gathering. Another seen as less likely, former Fed Governor and White House adviser Lawrence Lindsey, was not.

None of the chatter pinpointed a front-runner and many said the Bush administration, guided by a famously tight-lipped Vice President Dick Cheney, might well look beyond the usual array of names, possibly to Wall Street.

"My guess is that we'll hear by November who it is, given the need to have time for Congressional approval to occur, but I think the selection is wide open," said David Hale, chairman of Chicago-based Hale Advisors LLC.

Several meeting participants -- some of whom requested anonymity -- said they thought Greenspan might have considerable sway in advising Cheney on his successor.

- REUTERS