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I must say, I never expected to see the day where I would be talking about anything other than reducing the debt, I'm running into the tyranny of zero, which is where you can't reduce (the debt) any more

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
Debt
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Running
Anything
Reducing
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Never
Zero
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Tyranny

More quotes by Alan Greenspan

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How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?
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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.
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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.
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Without the triggers, that tax cut is irreponsible fiscal policy. Eventually, I think that will be the consensus view.
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The process of innovation is, of course, never ending.
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Improvements in lending practices driven by information technology have enabled lenders to reach out to households with previously unrecognized borrowing capacities.
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.
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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.
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We as central bankers need not be concerned if a collapsing financial asset bubble does not threaten to impair the real economy, its production, jobs and price stability.
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The number one problem in today's generation and economy is the lack of financial literacy.
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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.
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Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.
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I love facts and figures. It's like following a detective story, piecing together what's going on in the economy.
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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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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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Now, I only play very occasionally, and in fact, more piano than clarinet or sax.
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.
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But rules cannot substitute for character.
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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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The use of a growing array of derivatives and the related application of more-sophisticated approaches to measuring and managing risk are key factors underpinning the greater resilience of our largest financial institutions... Derivatives have permitted the unbundling of financial risks.
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