Excessive optimism shows the seeds of its own reversal in the form of imbalances that tend to grow over time.
ALAN GREENSPANSenator, if I seem clear to you, you must have misunderstood me’.
More Alan Greenspan Quotes
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They then need to reach a judgment about the probabilities, costs, and benefits of the various possible outcomes under alternative choices for policy.
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Regulators have not been able to achieve the level of future clarity required to act pre-emptively.
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I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
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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.
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Improvements in lending practices driven by information technology have enabled lenders to reach out to households with previously unrecognized borrowing capacities.
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.
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Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that.
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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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I came to a stark realization: chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits.
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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.
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Fiat money in extremis is accepted by nobody. Gold is always accepted.
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If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries.
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Political decisions are never random and will always lose out to innovative alternatives.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
I’ve always argued that this country has benefited immensely from the fact that we draw people from all over the world.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
I’m a plain soap kind of guy.
ALAN GREENSPAN






