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I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

Alan Greenspan

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.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Belief Context Dramatical General Growth Institution Market Occur Risk Structure
Yet deregulation set the stage for an enormous wave of creative destruction in the 1980s.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Creative Destructive Enormous Stage List Yet
Without calling the overall national issue a bubble, it’s pretty clear that it’s an unsustainable underlying pattern.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Buddle Call Clear Issue National Overall Pattern Pretty Unsustainable Without
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.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Develop Fiscal Path Place Policy Protection Regard Reluctance Sustainable Trade
No matter how skillful the trading scheme, over the long haul, abnormal returns are sustained only through abnormal exposure to risk.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Abnormal Exposure Haul Long Matter No Return Scheme Skillful Sustain Trade
Need to consider not only the most likely future path for the economy but also the distribution of possible outcomes about that path.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Consider Distribution Economy Future Likely Outcome Path Possible
If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Clear Misunderstood Must Said Seen Unduly
The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Able Content Leave Measure Own Succeeded True
What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn’t be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Derivative Extraordinary Marketplace Over Useful Year
Skilled shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. [Visa quotas] have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Competition Country Force Shied Shortage Skill
If prices go down, we will have problems – problems in the sense of spillover to other areas.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Area Other Price Problem Spillover
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…
ALAN GREENSPAN

Application Approach Derivative Grow More Relate Sophisticate Use
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
ALAN GREENSPAN

Anything Day Expect Must Reduce Say Talk
The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Always Debt Default Money Print Probability States United
We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Benefit Cash Guarantee Like Power Purchase
Since I’ve become a central banker, I’ve learned to mumble with great incoherence.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Banker Become Central Incoherence Member

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

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I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

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