The central focus of what we are doing at the Fed is to keep inflation from accelerating - and preferably decelerating. — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
As long as we issue fiat currency, I see no alternative to a legal tender law. — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
There is a limit to how much the United States Treasury can borrow. — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
There's no other job in public life that is like chairman of the Fed. — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values? — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
Regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary. — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
In an economy that already has lost some momentum, one must remain alert to the possibility that greater caution and weakening asset… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
It's only when the markets are perceived to have exhausted themselves on the downside that they turn. Trying to prevent them from… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
Institutions of the newer participants in global finance had not been tested, until recently...recent crisis have underscored certain financial structure vulnerabilities that… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
I don't know where the stock market is going, but I will say this, that if it continues higher, this will do… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
If somebody had said to me in June or July of 1987, 'We'd like you to become chairman of the Federal Reserve,… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
It's hard to tell which assets will be toxic. The best way to ensure that only shareholders and banks feel it is… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
One of the problems with hedge funds is that they are changing so rapidly. If you have the balance sheet that closed… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
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… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
Any onset of increased investor caution elevates risk premiums and, as a consequence, lowers asset values and promotes the liquidation of the… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
The use of a growing array of derivatives and the related application of more-sophisticated approaches to measuring and managing risk are key… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
Given our inevitably incomplete knowledge about key structural aspects of an everchanging economy and the sometimes asymmetric costs or benefits of particular… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
Given our inevitably incomplete knowledge about key structural aspects of our ever-changing economy and the sometimes asymmetric costs or benefits of particular… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
Even though some down payments are borrowed, it would take a large, and historically most unusual, fall in home prices to wipe… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
I've been in and out of Wall Street since 1949, and I've never seen the type of animosity between government and Wall… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
The economy is turning, and credit comes in with a lag, .. To the extent that a number of small firms are… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
History demonstrates that participants in financial markets are susceptible to waves of optimism. Excessive optimism shows the seeds of its own reversal… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
We as central bankers need not be concerned if a collapsing financial asset bubble does not threaten to impair the real economy,… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
It seems superfluous to constrain trading in some of the newer derivatives and other innovative financial contracts of the past decade. The… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
The very nature of finance is that it cannot be profitable unless it is significantly leveraged... and as long as there is… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
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… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share Image
Crony capitalism is essentially a condition in which... public officials are giving favours to people in the private sector in payment of political favours. — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
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,… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
To succeed, you will soon learn, as I did, the importance of a solid foundation in the basics of education - literacy, both verbal… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
I've always argued that this country has benefited immensely from the fact that we draw people from all over the world. — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
I cannot conceive of a politically feasible solution to this problem which will overdo cutting the deficit, where overdoing means harming the economy. It… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn't believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn't prove… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
Skilled shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. [Visa quotas] have been substituted for the wage… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the vast majority… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
Although the outlook is clouded by a number of uncertainties, the central tendencies of the projections .. imply continued good economic performance in the… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
At the outset of the creation of the euro in 1999, it was expected that the southern eurozone economies would behave like those in… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
We may be in a rapidly evolving international financial system with all the bells and whistles of the so-called new economy. But the old-economy… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
The guiding purpose of the government regulator is to prevent rather than to create something. — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
...our market system depends critically on trust-trust in the word of our colleagues and trust in the word of those with whom we do… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
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… — Alan Greenspan Copy Share
