Last night saw a full house for the rare dual speaking engagement of former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and his wife Andrea Mitchell, NBC News journalist. Here’s a roundup of excerpts from various media and blog sources.

CNN Money/Fortune:

The NBC news political reporter, who also happens to be his wife, steered the conversation to the more controversial points from his new book, The Age of Turbulence, criticisms of his fiscal policy, and more personal questions about figures like writer Ayn Rand.

In his 30-year friendship with the controversial Rand, Greenspan said she made him consider the essential role that human nature plays in the otherwise predictable and model driven study of economics and statistics.

“She got me to think in ways that naturally increased my ability to understand how the world works,” said Greenspan. “I go around the globe and am fascinated by the ways in which people all behave very similarly.”

“I’m torn between proving my objective journalistic values and wanting to save my marriage,” Mitchell confessed early on. She seemed to favor the former impulse by dogging 81-year-old Greenspan, twenty years her senior, on whether he helped set up the current bust by repeatedly lowering interest rates post-9/11. “Guilty or not guilty?” she asked him. When Greenspan pleaded the latter, she reminded him that other experts had warned that super-low rates might fuel a backfire. “If you had some inkling, why were you so bullish about adjustable-rate mortgages?” she persisted. (Greenspan said that he’d only promoted ARMs on prime mortgages, not foreseeing the subprime implosion that’s driven the current chill.)

On the Iraq War? An audience member asked the heated question—Was it all about oil?

“I wasn’t saying the administration was going to war because of oil. I was concerned that Saddam’s behavior over 30 years looked increasingly like an attempt to control Middle Eastern oil. And somebody like Saddam in control of the that oil flow could control the entire industrial world.”

Yes, he said, oil is currently $80/barrel. But, had Saddam had a nuclear weapon, we’d be looking at $140/barrel, if not more, said Greenspan.

“The fact is, if there had been no oil under the sands of Iraq, Saddam would not have been a problem.”