Clinton knew that Greenspan could sink his administration at any point, and Greenspan knew he knew, so Greenspan forced Clinton to cut spending 'to balance the budget,' something he was not interested in when a Republican President occupied the White House.
If you're wondering why your finances went to hell one reason is Alan Greenspan. Most boys outgrow Ayn Rand, but not Alan, who continued to praise her writing as recently as a few years ago. He believed in fighting inflation if that meant keeping down wages of the middle class (tough love and all that) but didn't care about the inflation wrought by gamblers in financial services. Now the poor old man professes to be "shocked" that his philosophy of life was so much crap.