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
Issuance of equity and of bonds by lower-rated corporations has come virtually to a halt -- even investment-grade companies have cut back substantially on their borrowings,
the amount of rate cuts required to revive the economy will not be deep.
We need ... to be aware that our front-loaded policy actions this year, coupled with the tax cuts under way, should be increasingly affecting economic activity as the year progresses,
There are powerful reasons to suspect that the elimination of the double taxation of dividends and cuts in marginal tax rates will elevate long-term productivity, ... If, however, in the process we get a significant increase in deficits, which induce a rise in long-term interest rates, that will be a significant undercutting of the benefits achieved by tax cuts.
I cannot conceive of a politically feasible solution to this problem which will overdo cutting the deficit, where overdoing means harming the economy. It might be technically possible, but it is not realistic.
Without the triggers, that tax cut is irreponsible fiscal policy. Eventually, I think that will be the consensus view.
Look, I'm very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we've gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous. And my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here.
We should not be cutting taxes by borrowing, ... We should be cutting taxes by reducing the level of spending and that's an issue that I think is critically on the table.
We should not be cutting taxes by borrowing, ... We do not have the capability of having both productive tax cuts and large expenditure increases, and presume that the deficit doesn't matter.
We should not be cutting taxes by borrowing,
Over the past decade, the U.S. economy has benefited from a remarkable acceleration of productivity. But experience suggests that such rapid advances are unlikely to be maintained in an economy that has reached the cutting edge of technology.
Despite the tightest labor markets in a generation, more workers report in a prominent survey that they are fearful of losing their jobs than similar surveys found in 1991 at the bottom of the last recession, ... The marked move of capital from failing to technologies to those at the cutting edge has quickened the pace at which job skills become obsolete.
I'm not going to comment on anybody's particular tax cut or structure of it,
I do not deny that many appear to have succeeded in a material way by cutting corners and by manipulating associates, both in their professional and in their personal lives. But material success is possible in this world and far more satisfying when it comes without exploiting others.