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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.

Alan Greenspan

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Alan Greenspan
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: March 6
Banker
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New York City
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Economy

More quotes by Alan Greenspan

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Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.
Alan Greenspan
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I came to a stark realization: chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits.
Alan Greenspan
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Greenspan, who knew so much more than most, knew far less than most supposed.
Alan Greenspan
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If I say something which you understand fully in this regard, I probably made a mistake.
Alan Greenspan
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But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?
Alan Greenspan
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The very nature of finance is that it cannot be profitable unless it is significantly leveraged... and as long as there is debt, there can be failure and contagion.
Alan Greenspan
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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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Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere. It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum. No one has ever eliminated any of that stuff.
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.
Alan Greenspan
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The probability of ten consecutive heads is 0.1 percent thus, when you have millions of coin tossers, or investors, in the end there will be thousands of very successful practitioners of coin tossing, or stock picking.
Alan Greenspan
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Rules cannot take the place of character.
Alan Greenspan
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Anything that we can do to raise personal savings is very much in the interest of this country.
Alan Greenspan
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Whatever you tax you get less of.
Alan Greenspan
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In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value.
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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Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.
Alan Greenspan
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History cannot be reduced to a set of statistics and probabilities.
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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It has been my experience that competency in mathematics, both in numerical manipulations and in understanding its conceptual foundations, enhances a person's ability to handle the more ambiguous and qualitative relationships that dominate our day-to-day financial decision-making
Alan Greenspan
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There are no easy choices. Easy choices are long gone.
Alan Greenspan