Quotes by Alan Greenspan

About Alan Greenspan:

Alan Greenspan 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).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Unless you are willing to compromise, society cannot live together.

Alan Greenspan

The only way you get economic progress, real standards of living moving higher, is to have the savings of the society continuously invested in the cutting-edge technologies. And those technologies which are obsolescent get dropped out.

Alan Greenspan

Chinese productivity is the highest in the world but the way they do it is by borrowing the technology from abroad, either by joint ventures or other means.

Alan Greenspan

One of the major problems with China is that its innovation is largely borrowed technology.

Alan Greenspan

Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.

Alan Greenspan

I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

Alan Greenspan

The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.

Alan Greenspan

Anything that we can do to raise personal savings is very much in the interest of this country.

Alan Greenspan

I don't know where the stock market is going, but I will say this, that if it continues higher, this will do more to stimulate the economy than anything we've been talking about today or anything anybody else was talking about.

Alan Greenspan

Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.

Alan Greenspan

Markets do very weird things because it reacts to how people behave, and sometimes people are a little screwy.

Alan Greenspan

Much fiscal policy is implemented, not through spending increases, but through tax credits and other so-called tax expenditures. The markets should respond to them as they do spending cuts, with little contraction in economic activity.

Alan Greenspan

Crony capitalism is essentially a condition in which... public officials are giving favours to people in the private sector in payment of political favours.

Alan Greenspan

We really can't forecast all that well, and yet we pretend that we can, but we really can't.

Alan Greenspan

Most high-income people in our country do not realize that their incomes are being subsidized by their protection from competition from highly skilled people who are prevented from immigrating to the United States. But we need such skills in order to...

Alan Greenspan

I get so engaged when I have a problem you cannot solve that I just cannot break away from what I am doing - I keep thinking and thinking and cannot stop.

Alan Greenspan

It's only when the markets are perceived to have exhausted themselves on the downside that they turn. Trying to prevent them from going down just merely prolongs the agony.

Alan Greenspan

I think the whole issue of a debt ceiling makes no sense to me whatsoever. Anybody who is remotely adroit at arithmetic doesn't need a debt ceiling to tell you where you are.

Alan Greenspan

If somebody had said to me in June or July of 1987, 'We'd like you to become chairman of the Federal Reserve, but you're never allowed to discuss any economics after you leave,' I'd have said, 'Forget it.' What do they want me to do? Become an anthro...

Alan Greenspan

Whatever you tax, you get less of.

Alan Greenspan

I've always considered myself more of a mathematician than a psychologist.

Alan Greenspan

Author Bio

  • NameAlan Greenspan
  • Description13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States
  • BornMarch 6, 1926
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionEconomist; Banker; Politician; Entrepreneur; Jazz Musician
  • AwardsKnight Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire; Presidential Medal Of Freedom