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
Indications that the extent of the application of existing technology is still far from complete, plus potential benefits derived from continuing synergies, support a distinct possibility that total productivity growth rates will remain high or even increase further,
in modest quantities does enhance the rate of growth of the economy and does create higher standards of living, but in excess, creates very serious problems.
The Federal Reserve has responded to the balance of market forces by gradually raising the federal funds rate over the past year, ... Certainly, to have done otherwise -- to have held the federal funds rate at last year's level even as credit demands and market interest rates rose -- would have required an inappropriately inflationary expansion of liquidity.
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,
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.
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.
Demand may be moving closer into line with the rate of advance in the economy's potential, given our continued impressive productivity growth, ... Should this favorable outcome prevail, the immediate threat to our prosperity from growing imbalances in our economy would abate.
Despite the combination of somewhat slower growth of productivity in recent quarters, higher energy prices, and a decline in the exchange rate for the dollar, core measures of consumer prices have registered only modest increases,
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.
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.
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,
I haven't stipulated increased rates of return are a significant issue in this debate.
I realize what that does to competitiveness, but that's the way markets work efficiently. In other words, to prevent the exchange rates from moving creates all sorts of distortions.