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We may be in a rapidly evolving international financial system with all the bells and whistles of the so-called new economy. But the old-economy rules of prudence are as formidable as ever. We violate them at our own peril.

Alan Greenspan

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Alan Greenspan
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: March 6
Banker
Economist
Entrepreneur
Jazz Musician
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New York City
New York
Financial
Violate
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Formidable
Rules
Evolving
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Rapidly
Economy
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Prudence
May
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Ever
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History cannot be reduced to a set of statistics and probabilities.
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The arts develop skills and habits of mind that are important for workers in the new economy of ideas.
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If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries.
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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.
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If we are to remain preeminent in transforming knowledge into economic value, America's system of higher education must remain the world's leader in generating scientific and technological breakthrough, and in meeting the challenge to educate workers.
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I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.
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Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.
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There are no easy choices. Easy choices are long gone.
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I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
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The Iraq War is largely about oil.
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How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?
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The guiding purpose of the government regulator is to prevent rather than to create something.
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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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