Quote

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

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
May
Bells
Ever
Evolve
Whistles
Financial
Violate
International
Formidable
Rules
Evolving
System
Rapidly
Economy
Peril
Called
Prudence

More quotes by Alan Greenspan

Image
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.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Regulation - which is based on force and fear - undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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.
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
Well, you probably will always believe there should be laws against fraud, and I don't think there is any need for a law against fraud.
Alan Greenspan
Image
...our market system depends critically on trust-trust in the word of our colleagues and trust in the word of those with whom we do business.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Productivity is notoriously difficult to predict.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Whatever you tax you get less of.
Alan Greenspan
Image
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.
Alan Greenspan
Image
The need for values is inbred. Their content is not.
Alan Greenspan
Image
What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Remember what we're looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency, that no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Anything that we can do to raise personal savings is very much in the interest of this country.
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 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.
Alan Greenspan
Image
You can't have the capitalist system if an increasing number of people think it is unjust.
Alan Greenspan
Image
Amateurs want to be right. Professionals want to make money.
Alan Greenspan
Image
The guiding purpose of the government regulator is to prevent rather than to create something.
Alan Greenspan