Alan Greenspan

Rules cannot take the place of character.

— Alan Greenspan

“We had a bubble in housing.”

— Alan Greenspan

But rules cannot substitute for character.

— Alan Greenspan

The need for values is inbred. Their content is not.

— Alan Greenspan

The process of innovation is, of course, never ending.

— Alan Greenspan

The Iraq War is largely about oil.

— Alan Greenspan

There are no easy choices. Easy choices are long gone.

— Alan Greenspan

Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.

— Alan Greenspan

I love to play tennis and golf, listen to music, watch baseball and root for the Redskins.

— Alan Greenspan

Greenspan, who knew so much more than most, knew far less than most supposed ...

— Alan Greenspan

The problem is you cannot have free global trade with highly restrictive, regulated domestic markets.

— Alan Greenspan

I've always considered myself more of a mathematician than a psychologist.

— Alan Greenspan

These days, even out of office, I still read economic reports.

— Alan Greenspan

If I say something which you understand fully in this regard, I probably made a mistake.

— Alan Greenspan

The purpose of a politician is to be a leader. A politician has to lead. Otherwise he's just a follower.

— Alan Greenspan

If prices go down, we will have problems - problems in the sense of spillover to other areas.

— Alan Greenspan

We will have more crises and none of them will look like this because no two crises have anything in common except…

— Alan Greenspan

I always believed in animal spirits. It's not their existence that is new. It's the fact that they are not random events,…

— Alan Greenspan

The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero…

— Alan Greenspan

I'm always amazed that my wife can handle different subjects - one day politics, the next day foreign policy. And she always…

— Alan Greenspan

What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk…

— Alan Greenspan

The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of…

— Alan Greenspan

But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions…

— Alan Greenspan

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

In an economy that already has lost some momentum, one must remain alert to the possibility that greater caution and weakening asset…

— Alan Greenspan

Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency...and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It's not…

— Alan Greenspan

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

What a sound money system does is to stabilize all the elements in it, and reduces the uncertainty that people confront. And…

— Alan Greenspan

Skilled shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. [Visa quotas] have been substituted for…

— Alan Greenspan

The only way you get economic progress, real standards of living moving higher, is to have the savings of the society continuously…

— Alan Greenspan

A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the…

— Alan Greenspan

“People do not realize in [the U.S], for example, how tenuous our ties to international energy are. That is, we on a…

— Alan Greenspan

Senator, we are groping for understanding, the knowledge you assume I possess doesn't exist' - 'The only effective regulation lies in the…

— Alan Greenspan

I have one other issue I'd like to throw on the table. I hesitate to do it, but let me tell you…

— Alan Greenspan

Given our inevitably incomplete knowledge about key structural aspects of an everchanging economy and the sometimes asymmetric costs or benefits of particular…

— Alan Greenspan

The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to…

— Alan Greenspan

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

Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning…

— Alan Greenspan

Finance is wholly different from the rest the economy.

— Alan Greenspan

I'm a better economist than I was a sax player.

— Alan Greenspan