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But rules cannot substitute for character.

Alan Greenspan

At the risk of some oversimplification, if the skill composition of our work force meshed fully with the needs of our increasingly complex capital-stock, wage-skill differentials would be stable.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Capital Composition Force Meshed Need Oversimplification Risk Skill Stock Work
If we allow terrorism to undermine our freedom of action, we could reverse at least part of the palpable gains achieved by postwar globalization. It is incumbent upon us not to allow that to happen.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Action Allow Freedom Terrorism Undermine
Regulation – which is based on force and fear – undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Base Business Deal Fear Force Regulation Undermine
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Absence Confiscation God Inflation Protect Save
But material success is possible in this world and far more satisfying when it comes without exploiting others.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Come Exploit Material Other Possible Satisfy Success
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.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Accelerate Circumstance Dramatic Economic Innovation Offer Return Tendency Train
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

Amateur Average Band Big Fade Fairy Good Musician Professional
The problem is not lack of regulation but unrealistic expectations. What we confront in reality is uncertainty, some of it frighteningly so…
ALAN GREENSPAN

Confront Expectation Frightened Lack Problem Regulation Unrealistic
Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Gold Payment Represent Ultimate World
I think that real pressure is going to occur not by the initiation by the Federal Reserve, but by the markets themselves.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Federal Reserve Initiation Market Pressure Themselves Think
If prices go down, we will have problems – problems in the sense of spillover to other areas.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Area Other Price Problem Spillover
Some succeed for a time. But while there may occasionally be mis-configurations among market prices that allow abnormal returns, they do not persist.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Among Configuration Market Occasionally Price Priest Some Succeed
I have one other issue I’d like to throw on the table. I hesitate to do it, but let me tell you some of the issues that are involved here.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Hesitate Issue Other Some Table Throw
We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Earning Exhibited Inflation Inverse Past Price Ratio Relationship See
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 GREENSPAN

Capitalism Cardinal Demand Integrity Interest Market Piece Trustworthy Vice Virtue
This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns from the financial markets.
ALAN GREENSPAN

Better Built Decade Example Financial Market Mousetrap People

But rules cannot substitute for character.

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But rules cannot substitute for character.

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