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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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Alan Greenspan
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: March 6
Banker
Economist
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Jazz Musician
Politician
New York City
New York
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More quotes by Alan Greenspan

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Regulators have not been able to achieve the level of future clarity required to act pre-emptively. The problem is not lack of regulation but unrealistic expectations. What we confront in reality is uncertainty, some of it frighteningly so...
Alan Greenspan
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Developing protectionism regarding trade and our reluctance to place fiscal policy on a more sustainable path are threatening what may well be our most valued policy asset: the increased flexibility of our economy, which has fostered our extraordinary resilience to shocks.
Alan Greenspan
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We will have more crises and none of them will look like this because no two crises have anything in common except human nature.
Alan Greenspan
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Productivity is notoriously difficult to predict.
Alan Greenspan
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People dont realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but thats as far as we go. And Ive had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that.
Alan Greenspan
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If I say something which you understand fully in this regard, I probably made a mistake.
Alan Greenspan
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Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office. I'm only half joking
Alan Greenspan
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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 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.
Alan Greenspan
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Well, you probably will always believe there should be laws against fraud, and I don't think there is any need for a law against fraud.
Alan Greenspan
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I've been in and out of Wall Street since 1949, and I've never seen the type of animosity between government and Wall Street. And I'm not sure where it comes from, but I suspect it's got to do with a general schism in this society which is really becoming ever more destructive.
Alan Greenspan
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I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.
Alan Greenspan
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I do not deny that many appear to have succeeded in a material way by cutting corners and by manipulating associates, both in their professional and in their personal lives. But material success is possible in this world and far more satisfying when it comes without exploiting others.
Alan Greenspan
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History cannot be reduced to a set of statistics and probabilities.
Alan Greenspan
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What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so.
Alan Greenspan
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Any informed borrower is simply less vulnerable to fraud and abuse.
Alan Greenspan
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There is no evidence that the business cycle has been repealed.
Alan Greenspan
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When trust is lost, a nation's ability to transact business is palpably undermined.
Alan Greenspan
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If we allow terrorism to undermine our freedom of action, we could reverse at least part of the palpable gains achieved by postwar globalization. It is incumbent upon us not to allow that to happen.
Alan Greenspan
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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.
Alan Greenspan