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
We have a very special mission. We are in charge of the nation's currency and the central bank, because of that, is involved in everyone's daily lives. We are the guardians of their purchasing power.
We cannot be a central bank for others.
The central focus of what we are doing at the Fed is to keep inflation from accelerating - and preferably decelerating.
History has demonstrated that implicit in any removal of power from central planners and broadening of market mechanisms -- as would occur under WTO -- is a more general spread of rights to individuals,
But, given our current state of knowledge, I find it difficult to envision central banks successfully targeting asset prices any time soon,
I find it difficult to believe, for example, that the crises that arose in Thailand and Korea would have been nearly so virulent had their central banks published data prior to the crises on net reserves instead of the not very informative gross reserve positions only,
Whether those adjustments are wrenching will depend ... on the degree of economic flexibility that we and our trading partners maintain, and I hope enhance, in the years ahead,
We're going to see some erosion in a number of macroeconomic variables
What they perceive as newly abundant liquidity can readily disappear,
when we are at neutral, we will know it.
Unless the situation is reversed, at some point these budget trends will cause serious economic disruptions,
I believe that the general growth in large [financial] institutions have occurred in the context of an underlying structure of markets in which many of the larger risks are dramatically -- I should say, fully -- hedged.
As long as we issue fiat currency, I see no alternative to a legal tender law.
I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.