Quote

The guiding purpose of the government regulator is to prevent rather than to create something.

Alan Greenspan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alan Greenspan
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: March 6
Banker
Economist
Entrepreneur
Jazz Musician
Politician
New York City
New York
Guiding
Prevent
Create
Purpose
Rather
Government
Something
Regulator
Regulators

More quotes by Alan Greenspan

Image
This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns from the financial markets. Some succeed for a time. But while there may occasionally be mis-configurations among market prices that allow abnormal returns, they do not persist.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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
Image
The Iraq War is largely about oil.
Alan Greenspan
Image
The free lunch has still to be invented.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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
Image
There is no evidence that the business cycle has been repealed.
Alan Greenspan
Image
The economy is turning, and credit comes in with a lag, .. To the extent that a number of small firms are finding it difficult to get the credit they need at a price they can afford, that's likely to change for the better.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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
Image
Significantly opening up immigration to skilled workers solves two problems. The companies could hire the educated workers they need. And those workers would compete with high-income people, driving more income equality.
Alan Greenspan
Image
[Republicans] swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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.
Alan Greenspan
Image
It has been my experience that competency in mathematics, both in numerical manipulations and in understanding its conceptual foundations, enhances a person's ability to handle the more ambiguous and qualitative relationships that dominate our day-to-day financial decision-making
Alan Greenspan
Image
I love to play tennis and golf, listen to music, watch baseball and root for the Redskins.
Alan Greenspan
Image
It's a bubble. It has to have intrinsic value. You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven't been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can.
Alan Greenspan
Image
If I say something which you understand fully in this regard, I probably made a mistake.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency...and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It's not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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.
Alan Greenspan
Image
The more flexible an economy, the greater its ability to self-correct in response to inevitable, often unanticipated, disturbances and thus to contain the size and consequences of cyclical imbalances.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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