Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices.
ALAN GREENSPANAny onset of increased investor caution elevates risk premiums and, as a consequence, lowers asset values and promotes the liquidation of the debt that supported higher asset prices.
More Alan Greenspan Quotes
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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.
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This is the reason that history has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.
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Amateurs want to be right. Professionals want to make money.
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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.
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Productivity is notoriously difficult to predict.
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I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy.
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While local economies may experience significant price imbalances, a national severe price distortion seems most unlikely in the United States, given its size and diversity.
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Remember what we’re looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency, that no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match.
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The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.
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While these tendencies were no doubt in train in the “old,” pre-1990s economy, they accelerated over the past decade as a number of technologies with their roots in the cumulative innovations of the past half-century began to yield dramatic economic returns.
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The free lunch has still to be invented.
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It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum.
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We need, in effect, to make the phantom ‘lock-boxes’ around the trust fund real.
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Now, I only play very occasionally, and in fact, more piano than clarinet or sax.
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Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.
ALAN GREENSPAN