Alan Greenspan quotes

I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I said. (Alan Greenspan)
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. View quote
Alan Greenspan
History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums. View quote
Alan Greenspan
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:... View quote
Alan Greenspan
Without calling the overall national issue a bubble, it's pretty clear that it's an unsustainable underlying pattern. View quote
Alan Greenspan
When trust is lost, a nation's ability to transact business is palpably undermined. View quote
Alan Greenspan
I came to a stark realization: chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits. View quote
Alan Greenspan
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. View quote
Alan Greenspan
In general, corruption tends to exist whenever governments have favors to extend, or something to sell. View quote
Alan Greenspan
The need for values is inbred. Their content is not. View quote
Alan Greenspan
If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries. (Alan Greenspan)
The probability of ten consecutive heads is 0.1 percent; thus, when you have millions of coin tossers, or investors, in the end there will be thousands of very successful practitioners of coin tossing, or stock picking. View quote
Alan Greenspan
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. View quote
Alan Greenspan
American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage. View quote
Alan Greenspan
Cash is available and we should use that in larger amounts, as is necessary, to solve the problems of the stress of this. View quote
Alan Greenspan
Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise. View quote
Alan Greenspan
While local economies may experience significant price imbalances, a national severe price distortion seems most unlikely in the United States, given its size and diversity. View quote
Alan Greenspan
Since becoming a central banker, I have learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said. View quote
Alan Greenspan
Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity – myself especially – are in a state of shocked disbelief. View quote
Alan Greenspan
Over the years I have had the most contact with Lee Kuan Yew, most recently in 2006, and have always found him impressive, even though we do not always see eye to eye. I met him first when he was George Shultz's guest at the famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) Bohemian Grove, a male only bonding retreat among the redwoods of California. View quote
Alan Greenspan
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)
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? View quote
Alan Greenspan
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. View quote
Alan Greenspan
The Fabians laid the groundwork for modern social democracy, and their influence on the world would end up being at least as powerful as that of Marx. View quote
Alan Greenspan
That said, there can be little doubt that exceptionally low interest rates on ten-year Treasury notes, and hence on home mortgages, have been a major factor in the recent surge of homebuilding and home turnover, and especially in the steep climb in home prices. Although a 'bubble' in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely, there do appear to be, at a minimum, signs of froth in some local markets where home prices seem to have risen to unsustainable levels. View quote
Alan Greenspan