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

It is very difficult to predict when a bond crisis could happen.

Alan Greenspan

Diplomacy is really far less important than the stock movements within Russia.

Alan Greenspan

I'm a free-market economist from years and years back, and I've never veered from that.

Alan Greenspan

The culture of Greece is not the same as the culture of Germany, and to fuse them into a single unit is extremely difficult.

Alan Greenspan

The problem is you cannot have free global trade with highly restrictive, regulated domestic markets.

Alan Greenspan

There is a limit to how much the United States Treasury can borrow.

Alan Greenspan

Since 1948 I have spent every single day thinking how the economic and political worlds have changed.

Alan Greenspan

If I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

Alan Greenspan

The purpose of a politician is to be a leader. A politician has to lead. Otherwise he's just a follower.

Alan Greenspan

The central focus of what we are doing at the Fed is to keep inflation from accelerating - and preferably decelerating.

Alan Greenspan

Manufacturing capacity is not a rigid level against which one bounces. When you are dealing with a world economy, with a flexibility to employ production facilities other than one's own, then the concept of capacity is vaguer.

Alan Greenspan

I was sort of shocked when it all of a sudden turned out that I got all A's through college, with the exception of two B's in the first term. I never envisaged myself as summa cum laude.

Alan Greenspan

Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn't believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn't prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit.

Alan Greenspan

At the outset of the creation of the euro in 1999, it was expected that the southern eurozone economies would behave like those in the north; the Italians would behave like Germans. They didn't. Instead, northern Europe fell into subsidizing southern...

Alan Greenspan

Europe is very critical to the United States in the sense not only do we have a fourth of our exports there, but more importantly, a significant proportion of the foreign affiliate profits in fact, half of U.S. corporations, are in Europe.

Alan Greenspan

Increased jobs are the consequence of increased trade. Increasing jobs more than output implies a fall in productivity and standards of living. That surely cannot be our goal.

Alan Greenspan

under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy's stability and balanced growth... The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimite...

Alan Greenspan

The only way to have several currencies from divergent nations lumped together is if they are culturally close, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. If they aren't, it simply can't continue to work.

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