Alan Greenspan, the former head of the US Federal Reserve, has issued a withering attack on President Bush’s handling of the American economy.

The man credited with guiding the US through two decades of economic boom says Bush and his inner circle put their political priorities ahead of the economic good of the country.

Denouncing the tax cuts brought in by Bush, Greenspan says in his memoirs, which we serialise in The Daily Telegraph this week, that the Republicans deserved to lose the last Congressional elections in November because they abandoned fiscal discipline and hugely swelled the US budget deficit.

But Greenspan, 81 – a lifelong Republican who served six presidents as an adviser and as Fed chairman from 1987 to 2006 – writes in The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World: “Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences.”

Greenspan attacks Bush over tax cuts and high spending – Telegraph