Alan Greenspan Quotes

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

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity – myself especially – are in a state of shocked disbelief.

I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that bar code scanners at checkout counters increased the speed that cashiers could ring up payments by 30 percent and reduced labor requirements of cashiers and baggers by 10 to 15 percent.

I know you think you understand what you thought I said , but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard isn't what I meant

Slave owners invested a growing amount of capital in their slaves: by 1861, almost half the total value of the South’s capital assets was in the “value of negroes.

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.

Much of the securitization took the form of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) with senior credit tranches certified by rating agencies as AAA. It was the failure to properly price such risky assets that characterized the crisis.

I came to a stark realization: chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits.

The James Hills and J.P. Morgans are an affront to a society dedicated to the worship of mediocrity.

Four decades after Thomas Edison’s spectacular illumination of Lower Manhattan in 1882, electricity had done little to make the country’s factories more productive.

These immigrants were an undoubted plus for the economy.5 They were disproportionately young adults with few dependents and a drive to make it. They were all by definition adventurers who were willing to risk an ocean voyage to a new world for a chance of a better life. They provided the hands and muscles that built the machines, roads, and bridges of a rapidly industrializing nation:

Over the years I have had the most contact with Lee Kuan Yew, most recently in 2006, and have always found him impressive, even though we do not always see eye to eye. I met him first when he was George Shultz's guest at the famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) Bohemian Grove, a male only bonding retreat among the redwoods of California.

That said, there can be little doubt that exceptionally low interest rates on ten-year Treasury notes, and hence on home mortgages, have been a major factor in the recent surge of homebuilding and home turnover, and especially in the steep climb in home prices. Although a 'bubble' in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely, there do appear to be, at a minimum, signs of froth in some local markets where home prices seem to have risen to unsustainable levels.

(thirty-one of the first forty U.S. Post Office pilots were killed in the first six years).