Alan Greenspan Quotes

United States, Economist
March 6, 1926

Alan Greenspan KBE (/ˈælən ˈɡriːnspæn/; born March 6, 1926) is an American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. He currently works as a private adviser and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC. First appointed Federal Reserve chairman by President Ronald Reagan in August 1987, he was reappointed at successive four-year intervals until retiring on January 31, 2006, after the second-longest tenure in the position (behind William McChesney Martin).

Since becoming a central banker, I have learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.

Alan Greenspan
- Great
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
- Past

There are signs of froth in some local markets where home prices seem to have risen to unsustainable levels.

Alan Greenspan
- Home
Modern dynamic economies do not stay still long enough to allow for an accurate reading of their underlying structures.

Alan Greenspan
- Long
- Reading
I came to a stark realization: chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits.

Alan Greenspan
We generally did not talk about the stock market very much at the Fed.

Alan Greenspan
- Stock
When trust is lost, a nation's ability to transact business is palpably undermined.

Alan Greenspan
- Business
- Lost
- Trust
The Fabians laid the groundwork for modern social democracy, and their influence on the world would end up being at least as powerful as that of Marx.

Alan Greenspan
- Up
- World
- Powerful

History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.

Alan Greenspan
- History
- Risk
We had a bubble in housing.

Alan Greenspan
Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.

Alan Greenspan
- Gold
Rising interest rates have been advertised for so long and in so many places that anyone who has not appropriately hedged this position by now obviously is desirous of losing money.

Alan Greenspan
- Long
- Money
An area in which more rather than less government involvement is needed, in my judgment, is the rooting out of fraud. It is the bane of any market system.

Alan Greenspan
The need for values is inbred. Their content is not.

Alan Greenspan