WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has harshly criticized President George W. Bush's administration and the Republican-controlled Congress in his memoir for abandoning their party's principles on spending and deficits, The New York Times reported on Friday.

    In the 500-page book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Greenspan describes the Bush administration as so captive to its own political operation that it paid little attention to fiscal discipline, according to the report.

Former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan testifies during his final scheduled testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington in July 21, 2005 file photo. (File Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    And the former central bank chief also described Bush's first two Treasury secretaries, Paul H. O'Neill and John W. Snow, as essentially powerless, the report added.

    President Bush, he writes, was never willing to contain spending or veto bills that drove the country into deeper and deeper deficits, as Congress abandoned rules that required that the cost of tax cuts be offset by savings elsewhere.

    "The Republicans in Congress lost their way," writes Greenspan, a self-described "libertarian Republican."

    "They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose" in the 2006 election, when they lost control of the House and Senate, the daily quoted remarks in the memoir as saying.

    Greenspan, 81, was chairman of the U.S. central bank from August 1987 until January 2006. He was the second-longest serving chairman in the Fed's 93-year history.