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
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.
The use of a growing array of derivatives and the related application of more-sophisticated approaches to measuring and managing risk are key factors underpinning the greater resilience of our largest financial institutions .... Derivatives have permitted the unbundling of financial risks.
Such an increase in market value is too often viewed by market participants as structural and permanent, ... To some extent, those higher values may be reflecting the increased flexibility and resilience of our economy.
is scheduled to discuss the flexibility of the U.S. economy and its resilience to shocks, a topic he addressed two weeks ago.
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.
I came to a stark realization: chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits.
The gut-feel of the 55-year old trader is more important than the mathematical elegance of the 25-year old genius.