Quotes by Alan Greenspan - Page 4

Much fiscal policy is implemented, not through spending increases, but through tax credits and other so-called tax expenditures. The markets should respond to them as they do spending cuts, with little contraction in economic activity.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Expenditures
Spending
Spending Cuts
Tax
Contraction
Credits
Respond
Cuts
Economic Activity
Fiscal
Implemented
Increases
So-Called
Copy Quote
The only way you get economic progress, real standards of living moving higher, is to have the savings of the society continuously invested in the cutting-edge technologies. And those technologies which are obsolescent get dropped out.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Standards
Continuously
Dropped
Invested
Technologies
Copy Quote
I stated that I'm a libertarian Republican, which means I believe in a series of issues, such as smaller government, constraint on budget deficits, free markets, globalization, and a whole series of other things, including welfare reform.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Globalization
Including
Libertarian
Reform
Series
Smaller Government
Welfare
Welfare Reform
Government Believe I Believe
Budget
Budget Deficits
Government Believe Free
Constraint
Deficits
Free Markets
Smaller
Stated
Copy Quote
Europe is very critical to the United States in the sense not only do we have a fourth of our exports there, but more importantly, a significant proportion of the foreign affiliate profits in fact, half of U.S. corporations, are in Europe.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Corporations
Critical
Fourth
Proportion
Significant
Exports
Importantly
In Fact
Profits
Copy Quote
Regulators have not been able to achieve the level of future clarity required to act pre-emptively. The problem is not lack of regulation but unrealistic expectations. What we confront in reality is uncertainty, some of it frighteningly so...
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Expectations
Ignorance
Reality
Copy Quote
Putin probably, almost certainly, thinks that one of the great disasters of the 20th century was the demise of the Soviet Union. It's very obvious that he's trying to work its way back and maintain something similar to that sort of institution.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Demise
Obvious
Putin
Soviet
Soviet Union
Work Great Way
Disasters
Institution
Maintain
Union
Similar
Copy Quote
Regulation - which is based on force and fear - undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Moral
Protection
Regulation
Copy Quote
In an economy that already has lost some momentum, one must remain alert to the possibility that greater caution and weakening asset values in financial markets could signal or precipitate an excessive softening in household and business spending.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Economy
Financial
Momentum
Copy Quote
The only sustainable way to increase demand for vacant houses is to spur the formation of new households. Admitting more skilled immigrants, who tend to earn enough to buy homes, would accomplish that while paying other dividends to the U.S. economy.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Home
House
Spurs
Copy Quote
If we are to remain preeminent in transforming knowledge into economic value, America's system of higher education must remain the world's leader in generating scientific and technological breakthrough, and in meeting the challenge to educate workers.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
America
Economic Value
Teaching
Copy Quote
I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Debt
Long
Real
Copy Quote
Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency...and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It's not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Demand
Gold
Paper
Copy Quote
It's hard to overemphasize how important Ford's deregulation was. True, most of the benefits took years to unfold-rail freight rates, for example hardly budged at first. Yet deregulation set the stage for an enormous wave of creative destruction in the 1980s.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Creative
Important
Years
Copy Quote
If somebody had said to me in June or July of 1987, 'We'd like you to become chairman of the Federal Reserve, but you're never allowed to discuss any economics after you leave,' I'd have said, 'Forget it.' What do they want me to do? Become an anthropologist?'
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Federal Reserve
July
Anthropologist
Discuss
Federal
Reserve
Copy Quote
Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere. It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum. No one has ever eliminated any of that stuff.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Nature
Characteristics
Corruption
Fraud
Human Nature
Minimum
Stuff
Successful
Way
Everywhere
Like
Any
Exist
Ever
Economies
Eliminated
Human
Functions
Whether
Copy Quote
What I see in the corporate sector is very clearly an issue of a major shortfall in the issue of, what some people call confidence, but whatever you want to call it. Clearly people are looking out in the very distant future and they are saying that it is too complex.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Corporate
Complex
Distant
Sector
Copy Quote
We cannot rule out a situation in which a preemptive policy tightening becomes necessary, ... Such caution seems especially warranted with regard to the sharp rise in equity prices during the past two years. These gains have obviously raised questions of sustainability.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Past
Two
Years
Copy Quote
Developing protectionism regarding trade and our reluctance to place fiscal policy on a more sustainable path are threatening what may well be our most valued policy asset: the increased flexibility of our economy, which has fostered our extraordinary resilience to shocks.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Fiscal Policy
May
Resilience
Copy Quote
At the risk of some oversimplification, if the skill composition of our work force meshed fully with the needs of our increasingly complex capital-stock, wage-skill differentials would be stable, and the percentage changes in wage rates would be the same for all job grades.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Jobs
Risk
Skills
Copy Quote
I've been in and out of Wall Street since 1949, and I've never seen the type of animosity between government and Wall Street. And I'm not sure where it comes from, but I suspect it's got to do with a general schism in this society which is really becoming ever more destructive.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Government
Animosity
Becoming
Destructive
Wall
Suspect
Wall Street
Copy Quote
It has been my experience that competency in mathematics, both in numerical manipulations and in understanding its conceptual foundations, enhances a person's ability to handle the more ambiguous and qualitative relationships that dominate our day-to-day financial decision-making
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Success
Business
Decision
Copy Quote
We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century credit tsunami. Central banks and governments are being required to take unprecedented measures. Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity are in a state of shocked disbelief.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Government
Credit
Self
Copy Quote
I do not deny that many appear to have succeeded in a material way by cutting corners and by manipulating associates, both in their professional and in their personal lives. But material success is possible in this world and far more satisfying when it comes without exploiting others.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Life
Success
Business
Copy Quote
The use of a growing array of derivatives and the related application of more-sophisticated approaches to measuring and managing risk are key factors underpinning the greater resilience of our largest financial institutions... Derivatives have permitted the unbundling of financial risks.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Keys
Resilience
Risk
Copy Quote
A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the vast majority of homeowners have built up substantial equity in their homes despite large mortgage-market financed withdrawals of home equity in recent years.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Home
Levels
Years
Copy Quote
Any onset of increased investor caution elevates risk premiums and, as a consequence, lowers asset values and promotes the liquidation of the debt that supported higher asset prices, ... This is the reason that history has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Aftermath
Debt
Risk
Copy Quote
Look, I'm very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we've gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous. And my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Borrowed
Cutting
Spending
Subtle
Tax Cuts
Thinking
Views
Tax
Cuts
Disastrous
End Of The Day
Favor
Gotten
Programs
Proves
Recent
Recent Years
Copy Quote
I've been around long enough to know that a good deal of the praise heaped on me I had nothing to do with. The only thing I did object to was the fact that where the criticism was actually wrong. Did it bother me? Of course it bothered me. But I've been around long enough to have ups and downs. So you get over it.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Bother
Criticism
Over It
Praise
Good Enough Long
Good Me Long
Downs
Good Deal
Object
The Only Thing
Ups
Ups And Downs
Copy Quote
At the outset of the creation of the euro in 1999, it was expected that the southern eurozone economies would behave like those in the north; the Italians would behave like Germans. They didn't. Instead, northern Europe fell into subsidizing southern Europe's excess consumption, that is, its current account deficits.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Behave
Consumption
Creation
Euro
Eurozone
Excess
Expected
Account
Current
Deficits
Economies
Germans
Italians
Northern
Outset
Copy Quote
This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns from the financial markets. Some succeed for a time. But while there may occasionally be mis-configurations among market prices that allow abnormal returns, they do not persist.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Abnormal
May
People
Copy Quote
There are winners and there are losers. And as much as we would like to help the losers, if we do it in the way that directs the limited capital of the society to support the low-productivity parts of the economy, it means that the rest of the economy - our overall standard of living - will not rise as much as it could.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Rise
Capital
Losers
Limited
Standard
Overall
Parts
Winners
Copy Quote
People dont realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but thats as far as we go. And Ive had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Careers
Mistake
Successful
Copy Quote
Fear and euphoria are dominant forces, and fear is many multiples the size of euphoria. Bubbles go up very slowly as euphoria builds. Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that, I was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Bubbles
Causes
Contagion
Critical
Dominant
Euphoria
Fall
Looks
Phenomenon
Shocked
Size
Started
Very
Then
Apart
Builds
Down
Sort
Forces
Look
Slowly
Hits
Intellectually
Sharply
Which
Copy Quote
I do not understand where the backing of Bitcoin is coming from. There is no fundamental issue of capabilities of repaying it in anything which is universally acceptable, which is either intrinsic value of the currency or the credit or trust of the individual who is issuing the money, whether it's a government or an individual.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Trust
Acceptable
Bitcoin
Credit
Currency
Individual
Money Government Value
Backing
Capabilities
Fundamental
Intrinsic
Issue
Value
Universally
Copy Quote
People don't realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but that's as far as we go. And I've had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Causes
Account
Awesome
Forecast
Probabilities
We Cannot
Copy Quote
What a sound money system does is to stabilize all the elements in it, and reduces the uncertainty that people confront. And the one thing all human beings do when they are confronted with uncertainty is pull back, withdraw, disengage, and that means economic activity, which is really dealing with people, just goes straight down.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Activity
Economic
Elements
Human Beings
Sound
Uncertainty
Money People Back
Does
Back
Beings
Confront
Dealing
Down
Economic Activity
Goes
Pull
Stabilize
System
The One Thing
Withdraw
Copy Quote
Even though some down payments are borrowed, it would take a large, and historically most unusual, fall in home prices to wipe out a significant part of home equity. Many of those who purchased their residence more than a year ago have equity buffers in their homes adequate to withstand any price decline other than a very deep one.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Home
Fall
Years
Copy Quote
Most high-income people in our country do not realize that their incomes are being subsidized by their protection from competition from highly skilled people who are prevented from immigrating to the United States. But we need such skills in order to staff our productive economy, so that the standard of living for Americans as a whole can grow.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Protection
Staff
Incomes
Skilled
Subsidized
Copy Quote
And whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction,' American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the word economy. I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
War
Mass Destruction
Oil
Copy Quote
We ought to be opening up our borders to skilled labour from all parts of the world because [the state of the world is as follows: ] if we were to do that we would increase the supply of skilled workers that our schools have been unable to create and as a consequence of that we would lower the average wage of skills and reduce the degree of income inequality in this country.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Average
Country
School
Copy Quote
Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Integrity
Mean
Self Esteem
Copy Quote
Skilled shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. [Visa quotas] have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process we have created [a] privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at non-competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of the income inequality.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
America
Competition
Labor Force
Copy Quote
I don't think it's possible for the Fed to end its easy-money policies in a trouble-free manner. Recent episodes in which Fed officials hinted at a shift toward higher interest rates have unleashed significant volatility in markets, so there is no reason to suspect that the actual process of boosting rates would be any different. I think that real pressure is going to occur not by the initiation by the Federal Reserve, but by the markets themselves.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Different
Real
Thinking
Copy Quote
The recent period has been marked by a transformation to an economy that is more productive as competitive forces become increasingly intense and new technologies raise the efficiency of our businesses...While these tendencies were no doubt in train in the "old," pre-1990s economy, they accelerated over the past decade as a number of technologies with their roots in the cumulative innovations of the past half-century began to yield dramatic economic returns.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Technology
Past
Roots
Copy Quote
Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Japan
Past
Risk
Copy Quote
Given our inevitably incomplete knowledge about key structural aspects of our ever-changing economy and the sometimes asymmetric costs or benefits of particular outcomes, a central bank... need to consider not only the most likely future path for the economy but also the distribution of possible outcomes about that path. They then need to reach a judgment about the probabilities, costs, and benefits of the various possible outcomes under alternative choices for policy.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Choices
Incomplete Knowledge
Keys
Copy Quote
Senator, we are groping for understanding, the knowledge you assume I possess doesn't exist' - 'The only effective regulation lies in the propensity of customers to choose alternatives, of investors to move their funds elsewhere and of labour to acquire technical skills' - 'Senator, if I seem clear to you, you must have misunderstood me' - 'Unfortunately, Senator, nobody knows where the next innovative idea is coming from. Political decisions are never random and will always lose out to innovative alternatives
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Ignorance
Lying
Moving
Copy Quote
I have one other issue I'd like to throw on the table. I hesitate to do it, but let me tell you some of the issues that are involved here. If we are dealing with psychology, then the thermometers one uses to measure it have an effect. I was raising the question on the side with Governor Mullins of what would happen if the Treasury sold a little gold in this market. There's an interesting question here because if the gold price broke in that context, the thermometer would not be just a measuring tool. It would basically affect the underlying psychology.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Interesting
Issues
Psychology
Copy Quote
The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
Alan Greenspan / Economist
Mean
Rights
Understanding
Copy Quote

Related Economist Authors

Thomas Sowell
Economist
Monday, Jun 30, 1930
William Stanley Jevons
Economist
Tuesday, Sep 01, 1835
Sunday, Aug 13, 1882
William Petty
Economist
Friday, May 26, 1623
Tuesday, Dec 16, 1687
William Forsyth Sharpe
Economist
Saturday, Jun 16, 1934
William Easterly
Economist
Saturday, Sep 07, 1957
William Beveridge
Economist
Wednesday, Mar 05, 1879
Saturday, Mar 16, 1963
William A. Niskanen
Economist
Monday, Mar 13, 1933
Wednesday, Oct 26, 2011
Willem Buiter
Economist
Monday, Sep 26, 1949
Will Hutton
Economist
Sunday, May 21, 1950
Werner Sombart
Economist
Monday, Jan 19, 1863
Sunday, May 18, 1941
Wassily Leontief
Economist
Sunday, Aug 05, 1906
Friday, Feb 05, 1999
Wang Anshi
Economist
Saturday, Dec 08, 1021
Friday, May 21, 1086
Walter Heller
Economist
Friday, Aug 27, 1915
Monday, Jun 15, 1987
Walter E. Williams
Economist
Tuesday, Jun 30, 1936
Walter Block
Economist
Thursday, Aug 21, 1941

View All Economist Quotes

Top Authors

Steve Jobs
Entrepreneur
Thursday, Feb 24, 1955
Wednesday, Oct 05, 2011
Winston Churchill
Former Prime Minister Of The United Kingdom
Monday, Nov 30, 1874
Sunday, Jan 24, 1965
John Locke
Philosopher
Sunday, Aug 29, 1632
Tuesday, Oct 28, 1704
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil Rights Activist
Tuesday, Jan 15, 1929
Thursday, Apr 04, 1968
Charles Spurgeon
Preacher
Thursday, Jun 19, 1834
Sunday, Jan 31, 1892
Julius Caesar
Roman Dictator
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Jean De La Bruyere
Wednesday, Aug 16, 1645
Thursday, May 10, 1696
Joe Biden
Vice President Of The United States
Friday, Nov 20, 1942
Walt Whitman
Poet
Monday, May 31, 1819
Saturday, Mar 26, 1892
Will Rogers
Actor
Tuesday, Nov 04, 1879
Thursday, Aug 15, 1935
Barack Obama
44Th U.s. President
Friday, Aug 04, 1961
Dwight D. Eisenhower
34Th U.s. President
Tuesday, Oct 14, 1890
Friday, Mar 28, 1969
Pope John Paul Ii
Priest
Tuesday, May 18, 1920
Saturday, Apr 02, 2005
H. L. Mencken
Journalist
Sunday, Sep 12, 1880
Sunday, Jan 29, 1956
Robin Williams
Actor
Saturday, Jul 21, 1951
Monday, Aug 11, 2014

View All Authors

Alan Greenspan Quotes - Page 4

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Economist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Economist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page