Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspanis 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth6 March 1926
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
If no action is taken at all ... we're going to be confronted within a few years with a marked upward ratcheting of long-term interest rates, which is very debilitating to long-term economic growth,
In an environment of weak financial systems, lax supervisory regimes, and vague assurances about depositor or creditor protections, the state of confidence so necessary to the functioning of any banking system was torn asunder.
...In an economy that already has lost some momentum, one must remain alert to the possibility that greater caution and weakening asset values in financial markets could signal or precipitate an excessive softening in household and business spending,
On balance, the recovery in spending on business fixed investment is likely to be only gradual; in particular, its growth will doubtless be less frenetic than in 1999 and early 2000,
A continuation of this trend would soon make the lack of refining capacity a binding constraint on growth in oil use, ... lagging.
the need to expand our nation's ability to import natural gas.
If we are to remain preeminent in transforming knowledge into economic value, ... America's system of higher education must remain the world's leader in generating scientific and technological breakthroughs and in meeting the challenge to educate workers.
If you're going to move to private accounts, which I approve of, I think you have to do it in a cautious, gradual way.
In the face of energy price spike and the erosion of optimism in financial markets, consumer confidence, or sentiment, appears to be holding up reasonably well to date, though there have been some mixed signals of late.
intent on tightening 100 basis points (a full percentage point) in the early 2000 cycle.
Instead of trying to contain a putative bubble by drastic actions with largely unpredictable consequences, we chose, as we noted in our mid-1999 congressional testimony, to focus on policies to mitigate the fallout when it occurs and, hopefully, ease the transition to the next expansion.
In retrospect, I see nothing that we did that was inappropriate in terms of policy,
In principle, stock-option grants, properly constructed, can be highly effective in aligning corporate officers' incentives with those of shareholders, ... Regrettably, the current accounting for options has created some perverse effects on the quality of corporate disclosures that, arguably, is further complicating the evaluation of earnings.
Because there was little retrenchment during the cyclical downturn, the potential for a significant acceleration in activity in the household sector is likely to be more limited than in past business cycles,