Quote

Rules cannot take the place of character.

Alan Greenspan

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Alan Greenspan
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: March 6
Banker
Economist
Entrepreneur
Jazz Musician
Politician
New York City
New York
Place
Cannot
Character
Take
Rules

More quotes by Alan Greenspan

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Regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary.
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
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The very nature of finance is that it cannot be profitable unless it is significantly leveraged... and as long as there is debt, there can be failure and contagion.
Alan Greenspan
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I don't know where the stock market is going, but I will say this, that if it continues higher, this will do more to stimulate the economy than anything we've been talking about today or anything anybody else was talking about.
Alan Greenspan
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I'm always amazed that my wife can handle different subjects - one day politics, the next day foreign policy. And she always has so much fun doing it. We make a good team.
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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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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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.
Alan Greenspan
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Cash is available and we should use that in larger amounts, as is necessary, to solve the problems of the stress of this.
Alan Greenspan
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The recent evidence increasingly suggests that an economic expansion is already well under way, although an array of influences unique to this business cycle seems likely to moderate its speed.
Alan Greenspan
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Institutions of the newer participants in global finance had not been tested, until recently...recent crisis have underscored certain financial structure vulnerabilities that are not readily assuaged in the short run.
Alan Greenspan
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If you think you understand what I am saying you do not understand what I am saying.
Alan Greenspan
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To succeed, you will soon learn, as I did, the importance of a solid foundation in the basics of education - literacy, both verbal and numerical, and communication skills.
Alan Greenspan
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I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.
Alan Greenspan
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There is no evidence that the business cycle has been repealed.
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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The guiding purpose of the government regulator is to prevent rather than to create something.
Alan Greenspan
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Even though some down payments are borrowed, it would take a large, and historically most unusual, fall in home prices to wipe out a significant part of home equity. Many of those who purchased their residence more than a year ago have equity buffers in their homes adequate to withstand any price decline other than a very deep one.
Alan Greenspan
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Regulation - which is based on force and fear - undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory.
Alan Greenspan
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I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.
Alan Greenspan