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
The present policy path makes current promises, at least in real terms, highly conjectural,
no doubt that the current stance of policy ? will need to be changed at some point.
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,
We cannot rule out a situation in which a pre-emptive policy tightening may become appropriate before any sign of actual higher inflation becomes evident.
We think that coming up on a regular scheduled basis ... has been very productive, ... It requires us ... to have a structure of policy that is coherent to the Congress.
That greater tendency toward self-correction has made the cyclical stability of the economy less dependent on the actions of macroeconomic policy makers, whose responses often have come too late or have been misguided.
Developing protectionism regarding trade and our reluctance to place fiscal policy on a more sustainable path are threatening what may well be our most valued policy asset: the increased flexibility of our economy, which has fostered our extraordinary resilience to shocks.
This period of sub-par economic growth is not yet over, and we are not free of the risk that economic weakness will be greater than currently anticipated, requiring further policy response,
Any notable shortfall in economic performance from the exemplary standard of recent years runs the risk of reviving mistrust of market-oriented systems, even among conventional policy makers,
history cautions that investors' anticipations of the cumulative magnitude of policy actions and their timing under such circumstances are far from perfect.
Roger was the major policy maker during 9/11.
Hopefully his successor, whoever it is, will demonstrate that the good policy we've had over the past 18 years is as much due to the evolution of the institution as it is to Greenspan per se.
In these circumstances, monetary policy is able to be more patient,
The complexity of our economy is such, and the way liquidity flows through the system is such, that you essentially get very complex differences in the way monetary policy plays out, ... But, at the end of the day, it does seem to be effective.