Was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.
ALAN GREENSPANWe cannot rule out a situation in which a preemptive policy tightening becomes necessary.
More Alan Greenspan Quotes
-
-
I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the vast majority of homeowners have built up substantial equity in their homes despite large mortgage.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
The worst have failed; investors no longer fund them and are not likely to in the future.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
Political decisions are never random and will always lose out to innovative alternatives.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
[Republicans] swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
No matter how skillful the trading scheme, over the long haul, abnormal returns are sustained only through abnormal exposure to risk.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
Fear and euphoria are dominant forces, and fear is many multiples the size of euphoria. Bubbles go up very slowly as euphoria builds.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
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.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
…our market system depends critically on trust-trust in the word of our colleagues and trust in the word of those with whom we do business.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
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.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
If we were to do that we would increase the supply of skilled workers that our schools have been unable to create and as a consequence of that we would lower the average wage of skills and reduce the degree of income inequality in this country.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
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.
ALAN GREENSPAN