Alan Greenspan Quotes (280 Quotes)

I can safely say there is no endeavor to coordinate an interest rate cut,

While this stellar non-inflationary economic expansion still appears remarkably stress-free on the surface, there are developing imbalances that give us pause,

I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.

investing Social Security trust fund assets in equities compromises the efficient allocation of our capital -- whichis so essential to raising our standards of living.

The capacity of workers, after being displaced, to find a new job that will eventually provide nearly comparable pay most often depends on the general knowledge of the worker and the ability of that individual to learn new skills,

Technology is also damping upward price pressures through its effect on international trade,

...most of the gains in the level and the growth rate of productivity in the United States since 1995 appear to be structural, largely driven by advances in technology and its application -- irreversible in the sense that knowledge once gained is almost never lost,

If we delay, the adjustments could be abrupt and painful,

Without the needed restrictions on the size of the GSE balance sheets, we put at risk our ability to preserve safe and sound financial markets in the United States, a key ingredient of support for housing,

Lower budget deficits are the surest and most direct way to increase national saving. Higher national saving would help to lower real interest rates, spurring spending on capital goods so as to put cutting-edge technology in the hands of more American workers,

The growing stability of the world economy over the past decade may have encouraged investors to accept increasingly lower levels of compensation for risk.

Throughout all this history, the CEA has, in most cases, provided the president with the best economic advice available at the time and has, crucially, been a consistent advocate for the importance of market forces,

The trend of existing home sales has been relatively flat at a reasonable high level for quite a long period of time, and if we can maintain that we are doing well,

Indications that the extent of the application of existing technology is still far from complete, plus potential benefits derived from continuing synergies, support a distinct possibility that total productivity growth rates will remain high or even increase further,

new innovations have begun to alter the manner in which we do business and create value, often in ways not readily foreseeable even five years ago.

I haven't stipulated increased rates of return are a significant issue in this debate.

We owe it to those who will retire over the next couple of decades to promise only what the government can deliver,

For the moment, the broadly unanticipated behavior of world bond markets remains a conundrum .

Instead of trying to contain a putative bubble by drastic actions with largely unpredictable consequences, we chose, as we noted in our mid-1999 congressional testimony, to focus on policies to mitigate the fallout when it occurs and, hopefully, ease the transition to the next expansion.

We can be confident that new jobs will displace old ones as they always have, but not without a high degree of pain for those caught in the job-losing segment of America's massive job-turnover process,

only the peripheral winds of the Asian crisis.

Many homeowners might have saved tens of thousands of dollars had they held adjustable-rate mortgages rather than fixed-rate mortgages during the past decade.

The president and I have not discussed this, but I greatly appreciate his confidence, ... I have been privileged to be appointed by five presidents to various positions. If President Bush nominates me, and the Senate confirms his choice, I would have every intention of serving.

We're going to see some erosion in a number of macroeconomic variables

An increase in inflation doggedly forecast to follow the ever lower unemployment rate--now the lowest in three decades -- has not occurred,

Any informed borrower is simply less vulnerable to fraud and abuse.

The complexity of our economy is such, and the way liquidity flows through the system is such, that you essentially get very complex differences in the way monetary policy plays out, ... But, at the end of the day, it does seem to be effective.

In these circumstances, monetary policy is able to be more patient,

I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

While, three months ago, it was clearly a desirable action ... we didn't pass a stimulus bill, ... Fortunately it turned out we didn't need that particular action.

The addition of the Chinese economy to the global marketplace will result in a more efficient worldwide allocation of resources and will raise standards of living in China and its trading partners,

This situation suggests that international investors will eventually adjust their accumulation of dollar assets or, alternatively, seek higher dollar returns to offset concentration risk, elevating the cost of financing of the U.S. current account deficit and rendering it increasingly less tenable,

The effects of the present merger wave are yet to be determined, ... But, unless a relationship between bigness and market concentration can be more firmly rooted in anti-competitive behavior, bigness, per se, does not appear to be an issue for national economic policy.

At some point, labor market conditions can become so tight that the rise in nominal wages will start increasingly outpacing the gains in labor productivity, and prices inevitably will then eventually begin to accelerate,

Nobody has the capacity to fathom fully how the effects of the tragedy of Sept. 11 will play out in our economy,

Despite the tightest labor markets in a generation, more workers report in a prominent survey that they are fearful of losing their jobs than similar surveys found in 1991 at the bottom of the last recession, ... The marked move of capital from failing to technologies to those at the cutting edge has quickened the pace at which job skills become obsolete.

The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.

We need ... to be aware that our front-loaded policy actions this year, coupled with the tax cuts under way, should be increasingly affecting economic activity as the year progresses,

The United States has been in the forefront of the postwar opening up of international markets, much to our, and the rest of the world's, benefit, ... It would be a great tragedy were that process reversed.

The influence of capital gains on economic behavior ... is likely to be of substantial consequence for the prospective performance of the economy,

History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.

There is a palpable unease that businesses and jobs are being drained from the United States, with potentially adverse long-run implications for unemployment and the standard of living of the average American,

The world of antitrust is reminiscent of Alices Wonderland everything seemingly is, yet apparently isnt, simultaneously. It is a world in which competition is lauded as the basic axiom and guiding principle, yet 'too much' competition is condemned as 'cutthroat.' It is a world in which actions designed to limit competition are branded as criminal when taken by businessmen, yet praised as 'enlightened' when initiated by the government. It is a world in which the law is so vague that businessmen have no way of knowing whether specific actions will be declared illegal until they hear the judges verdict after the fact.

There appears to be enough evidence, at least tentatively, to conclude that our strategy of addressing the bubble's consequences rather than the bubble itself has been successful,

How significant and disruptive such adjustments turn out to be is an open question, ... shocks should be largely absorbed by changes in prices, interest rates and exchange rates, rather than by wrenching declines in output and employment.

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.

As China's citizens experience economic gains, so will the American firms that trade in their expanding markets,

an array of influences unique to this business cycle, however, seems likely to moderate the speed of the anticipated recovery.

There are powerful reasons to suspect that the elimination of the double taxation of dividends and cuts in marginal tax rates will elevate long-term productivity, ... If, however, in the process we get a significant increase in deficits, which induce a rise in long-term interest rates, that will be a significant undercutting of the benefits achieved by tax cuts.

But it is clear that, for the time being at least, the increase in spending on consumer goods and houses has come down several notches, albeit from very high levels.