Margaret Thatcher’s successor found that “she was uncertain how to react to someone who now held what she regarded as her job”. Is Ben Bernanke similarly cursed with an overactive predecessor? Last week, Alan Greenspan spooked markets by saying a US recession was possible. He then reiterated this view the day after Mr Bernanke told Congress that growth would probably pick up. In a Bloomberg interview on Monday, Mr Greenspan, probably unwisely, refined his forecast further, predicting a one-in-three chance of a recession.

Interpreting the former Federal Reserve chairman’s utterances has not got any easier. In January he reportedly gave Japan’s finance minister an upbeat economic diagnosis much in line with Mr Bernanke’s. Still, Mr Greenspan makes a lot of paid speeches, ranging from recent video addresses to global investor conferences in Asia, to next week’s scheduled keynote appearance at an “American Hero” lunch at the Boca Raton Hotel & Resort in Florida. Mr Greenspan says these events are private but it is clear that they filter into the public domain.