The former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, said he “didn’t really get” how the boom in subprime lending might hurt the economy, and endorsed his successor’s handling of recent market turmoil, CBS television reported.

The current chairman of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, “is doing an excellent job,” Mr. Greenspan said in an interview on the 60 Minutes program, according to excerpts emailed by CBS yesterday. The show is scheduled to air on September 16, a day before the publication of Mr. Greenspan’s book, “The Age of Turbulence.”

The remarks come amid criticism among some investors that Mr. Bernanke has failed to be as forceful as his predecessor in responding to financial turmoil. Mr. Greenspan in 1998 cut interest rates three times after a Russian debt default rippled through global markets. Mr. Bernanke’s Fed has refrained from lowering its benchmark so far, relying on other tools to provide liquidity.

“I’m not certain I would have done anything different” than Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Greenspan said in the interview, according to excerpts released by CBS. “I’m not sure that’s true,” Mr. Greenspan said when asked if he would act “dramatically and quickly now.”

The former Fed chief, who led the central bank for 18 years, said inflation is a bigger concern now than when policy makers cut the target rate for overnight loans between banks in 1998, CBS said.

“We were dealing in an environment back there where inflation was easing,” Mr. Greenspan said, according to the excerpts. “We could have acted without the fear of stoking inflationary pressures. You can’t do that anymore.”

“Greenspan, given his significant legacy and stature, giving Bernanke an ‘atta-boy’ in this environment is a positive boost for Bernanke,” the head of U.S. rate strategy for UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Conn., William O’Donnell, said. “It’s a nice vote of confidence for Bernanke going into next week’s meeting.”

The Federal Open Market Committee will lower the benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point, to 5%, when it meets September 18, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

As chairman, Mr. Greenspan won admiration for steering the economy through a series of crises, pumping out money to help growth rebound from a stockmarket crash in 1987.

After the 2001 recession, the Fed cut its benchmark rate to a fourdecade low of 1%. That move, along with Mr. Greenspan’s hands-off approach to regulation, have brought him under fire as this year’s bursting of the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis again threaten to sink the broader economy.

Mr. Greenspan said in the interview that he was aware of lax lending standards in the subprime market, in which borrowers have little or poor credit history.