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I believe that the general growth in large [financial] institutions have occurred in the context of an underlying structure of markets in which many of the larger risks are dramatically -- I should say, fully -- hedged.

Alan Greenspan

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Alan Greenspan
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: March 6
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New York City
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More quotes by Alan Greenspan

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We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.
Alan Greenspan
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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 rules of prudence are as formidable as ever. We violate them at our own peril.
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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.
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Since I've become a central banker, I've learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.
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Crony capitalism is essentially a condition in which... public officials are giving favours to people in the private sector in payment of political favours.
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I cannot conceive of a politically feasible solution to this problem which will overdo cutting the deficit, where overdoing means harming the economy. It might be technically possible, but it is not realistic.
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Amateurs want to be right. Professionals want to make money.
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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.
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I'm a better economist than I was a sax player.
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Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.
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Remember what we're looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency, that no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match.
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If prices go down, we will have problems - problems in the sense of spillover to other areas.
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I love facts and figures. It's like following a detective story, piecing together what's going on in the economy.
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History demonstrates that participants in financial markets are susceptible to waves of optimism. Excessive optimism shows the seeds of its own reversal in the form of imbalances that tend to grow over time.
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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
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History cannot be reduced to a set of statistics and probabilities.
Alan Greenspan
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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.
Alan Greenspan
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The need for values is inbred. Their content is not.
Alan Greenspan
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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.
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Rules cannot take the place of character.
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