Quote

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

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
Must
Reduce
Never
Zero
Would
Tyranny
Debt
Expected
Talking
Running
Anything
Reducing

More quotes by Alan Greenspan

Image
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
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
Without calling the overall national issue a bubble, it's pretty clear that it's an unsustainable underlying pattern.
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
Productivity is notoriously difficult to predict.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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
Image
The arts develop skills and habits of mind that are important for workers in the new economy of ideas.
Alan Greenspan
Image
I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Whatever you tax you get less of.
Alan Greenspan
Image
If you think you understand what I am saying you do not understand what I am saying.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Indeed, better risk management may be the only truly necessary element of success in banking.
Alan Greenspan
Image
If prices go down, we will have problems - problems in the sense of spillover to other areas.
Alan Greenspan
Image
What an ideology is is a conceptual framework with the way people deal with reality. Everyone has one. You have to, to exist you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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
Image
It is decidedly not true that nice guys finish last, as that highly original American baseball philosopher, Leo Durocher, was alleged to have said.
Alan Greenspan
Image
How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?
Alan Greenspan
Image
Greenspan, who knew so much more than most, knew far less than most supposed.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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
Image
History cannot be reduced to a set of statistics and probabilities.
Alan Greenspan