An interest piece on Barron’s suggests that all-round economic genius and former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan may be shy about public scrutiny of Ph.D. dissertation.

According to a new book by Robert Auerich, Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B. Gonzalez Battles Alan Greenspan’s Bank, nobody seems to be able to track down the Maestro’s dissertation, which led to Greenspan obtaining a doctorate in economics from NYU.

According to Barron’s:

For years, NYU told the public that, at Greenspan’s request, the thesis was locked away from public view in a vault at its Bobst Library. Auerbach himself was told this in January 2004 when he tried to obtain a copy.

Auerbach, who has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago (Nobel laureate Milton Friedman was his thesis adviser), kept requesting access to the papers until NYU’s provost, David McLaughlin, finally admitted in August 2005 that, “I can tell you that it was the practice of the business school, during the 1970s, not to deposit dissertations with the library. Thus, a copy of Greenspan’s dissertation is not in the Bobst Library. We suggest that you contact Greenspan directly in order to obtain a copy of his dissertation.

Barron’s did exactly that but was told by Greenspan’s spokeswoman that “his busy travel schedule precluded him from getting back to us in time for our deadline.” As for two inquires to the provost, they also went unanswered.

Such a story may not come as a surprise to those skeptical of the merits of centrally planned economics.

“We doubt that the science of as practiced by Bernanke, King and Trichet is really any more reliable than the science of modern portfolio management as practiced by the geniuses at Bear, Lehmann and all the others,” says Bill Bonner.

“We take as a given that central planners are as prone to error as a bear to honey. It also seems likely to us that it was a mistake for Alan Greenspan to cut rates so aggressively in ’02-’03 and leave them below the inflation rate for so long. The result was an orgy of spending and borrowing in the Anglo-Saxon economies…and an orgy of factory-building and capital formation in Asia. In both parts of the world, people missed their marks – overdoing it considerably.”