Alan Greenspan Quotes, Long Quotes, Debt Quotes

The very nature of finance is that it cannot be profitable unless it is significantly leveraged... and as long as there is debt, there can be failure and contagion.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Long Quotes , Debt Quotes

As long as we issue fiat currency, I see no alternative to a legal tender law.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Money Quotes , Law Quotes

I must say, I never expected to see the day where I would be talking about anything other than reducing the debt, I'm running into the tyranny of zero, which is where you can't reduce (the debt) any more

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Running Quotes , Zero Quotes

No matter how skillful the trading scheme, over the long haul, abnormal returns are sustained only through abnormal exposure to risk.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Long Quotes , Risk Quotes

Rules cannot take the place of character.

6 years ago

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History demonstrates that participants in financial markets are susceptible to waves of optimism. Excessive optimism shows the seeds of its own reversal in the form of imbalances that tend to grow over time.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Optimism Quotes , Imbalance Quotes

Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn't believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn't prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Believe Quotes , Facts Quotes

American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Alternatives Quotes , Benefits Quotes

Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Government Quotes , Support Quotes

I've been in and out of Wall Street since 1949, and I've never seen the type of animosity between government and Wall Street. And I'm not sure where it comes from, but I suspect it's got to do with a general schism in this society which is really becoming ever more destructive.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Wall Quotes , Government Quotes

Even though some down payments are borrowed, it would take a large, and historically most unusual, fall in home prices to wipe out a significant part of home equity. Many of those who purchased their residence more than a year ago have equity buffers in their homes adequate to withstand any price decline other than a very deep one.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Fall Quotes , Home Quotes

Greenspan, who knew so much more than most, knew far less than most supposed.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Ignorance Quotes

Regulators have not been able to achieve the level of future clarity required to act pre-emptively. The problem is not lack of regulation but unrealistic expectations. What we confront in reality is uncertainty, some of it frighteningly so...

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Ignorance Quotes , Reality Quotes

Given our inevitably incomplete knowledge about key structural aspects of our ever-changing economy and the sometimes asymmetric costs or benefits of particular outcomes, a central bank... need to consider not only the most likely future path for the economy but also the distribution of possible outcomes about that path. They then need to reach a judgment about the probabilities, costs, and benefits of the various possible outcomes under alternative choices for policy.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Keys Quotes , Incomplete Knowledge Quotes

Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Money Quotes , Gold Quotes

If all currencies are moving up or down together, the question is: relative to what? Gold is the canary in the coal mine. It signals problems with respect to currency markets. Central banks should pay attention to it.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Moving Quotes , Together Quotes

If I say something which you understand fully in this regard, I probably made a mistake.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Mistake Quotes , Made Quotes

Institutions of the newer participants in global finance had not been tested, until recently...recent crisis have underscored certain financial structure vulnerabilities that are not readily assuaged in the short run.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Running Quotes , Financial Quotes

We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century credit tsunami. Central banks and governments are being required to take unprecedented measures. Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity are in a state of shocked disbelief.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Government Quotes , Self Quotes

Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency...and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It's not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Greenspan Quotes , Gold Quotes , Paper Quotes