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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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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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Any informed borrower is simply less vulnerable to fraud and abuse.
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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We cannot rule out a situation in which a preemptive policy tightening becomes necessary, ... Such caution seems especially warranted with regard to the sharp rise in equity prices during the past two years. These gains have obviously raised questions of sustainability.
Alan Greenspan
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I've always argued that this country has benefited immensely from the fact that we draw people from all over the world.
Alan Greenspan
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It seems superfluous to constrain trading in some of the newer derivatives and other innovative financial contracts of the past decade. The worst have failed investors no longer fund them and are not likely to in the future.
Alan Greenspan
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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.
Alan Greenspan
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Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.
Alan Greenspan
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The number one problem in today's generation and economy is the lack of financial literacy.
Alan Greenspan
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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
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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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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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At the risk of some oversimplification, if the skill composition of our work force meshed fully with the needs of our increasingly complex capital-stock, wage-skill differentials would be stable, and the percentage changes in wage rates would be the same for all job grades.
Alan Greenspan
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I'm a better economist than I was a sax player.
Alan Greenspan
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The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.
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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Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.
Alan Greenspan
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The tub helps me relax, and it's a great place to read.
Alan Greenspan
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In general, corruption tends to exist whenever governments have favors to extend, or something to sell.
Alan Greenspan
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If prices go down, we will have problems - problems in the sense of spillover to other areas.
Alan Greenspan
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Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn't believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn't prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit.
Alan Greenspan