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
is on an unsustainable path, in which large deficits result in rising interest rates and ever-growing interest payments that augment deficits in future years.
Fixed mortgage rates remain at historically low levels and thus should continue to fuel reasonably strong housing demand and, through equity extraction, to support consumer spending as well,
Because it is a highly leveraged operation and one which requires very sophisticated hedging of interest rate risk, it's imparting a significant potential systemic risk to the American financial system,
...most of the gains in the level and the growth rate of productivity in the United States since 1995 appear to be structural, largely driven by advances in technology and its application -- irreversible in the sense that knowledge once gained is almost never lost,
the amount of rate cuts required to revive the economy will not be deep.
To date, interest-sensitive spending has remained robust and the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) will have to stay alert for signs that real interest rates have not yet risen enough to bring the growth of demand into line with that of potential supply, even should the acceleration in productivity continue,
fully appreciate the risk that some households may have trouble meeting monthly payments as interest rates and the macroeconomic climate change.
I am fully aware of the fact that it may not be possible to keep the tax rate down and still maintain some semblance of deficit control, ... But ... I would strongly recommend that the priority of evaluations start with the expenditure side: what can be constrained, what can be reduced.
If we can maintain an adequate degree of flexibility, some of America 's economic imbalances, most notably the large current account deficit and the housing boom, can be rectified by adjustments in prices, interest rates, and exchange rates rather than through more-wrenching changes in output, incomes, and employment.
So long as foreigners continue to seek ever-increasing quantities of dollar investments in their portfolios, as they obviously have been, the exchange rate for the dollar will remain firm,
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.
The rates of return on investment in the same new technologies are correspondingly less in Europe and Japan because businesses there face higher costs of displacing workers than we do, ... Moreover, because our costs of dismissing workers are lower, the potential costs of hiring and the risks associated with expanding employment are less.
The rate of growth of productivity cannot increase indefinitely, ... While there appears to be considerable expectation in the business community, and possibly Wall Street, that the productivity acceleration has not yet peaked, experience advises caution.
A slowing in the rate of inventory liquidation will induce a rise in industrial production if demand for those products is stable or is falling only moderately, ... That rise in production will, other things being equal, increase household income and spending.