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Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.

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
Revolution
Something
Retrospect
Revolutions

More quotes by Alan Greenspan

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Without the triggers, that tax cut is irreponsible fiscal policy. Eventually, I think that will be the consensus view.
Alan Greenspan
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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.
Alan Greenspan
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The gut-feel of the 55-year old trader is more important than the mathematical elegance of the 25-year old genius.
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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Although the outlook is clouded by a number of uncertainties, the central tendencies of the projections .. imply continued good economic performance in the United States.
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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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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Whatever you tax you get less of.
Alan Greenspan
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Any informed borrower is simply less vulnerable to fraud and abuse.
Alan Greenspan
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By far the most significant event in finance during the past decade has been the extraordinary development and expansion of financial derivatives.
Alan Greenspan
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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?
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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I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
Alan Greenspan
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Without calling the overall national issue a bubble, it's pretty clear that it's an unsustainable underlying pattern.
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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Now, I only play very occasionally, and in fact, more piano than clarinet or sax.
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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There are no easy choices. Easy choices are long gone.
Alan Greenspan
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[Republicans] swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.
Alan Greenspan
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Anything that we can do to raise personal savings is very much in the interest of this country.
Alan Greenspan