People dont realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but thats as far as we go. And Ive had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward.
ALAN GREENSPANPolitical decisions are never random and will always lose out to innovative alternatives.
More Alan Greenspan Quotes
-
-
I’ve been in and out of Wall Street since 1949, and I’ve never seen the type of animosity between government and Wall Street. And I’m not sure where it comes from, but I suspect it’s got to do with a general schism in this society which is really becoming ever more destructive.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
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 -
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 -
Was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
I love to play tennis and golf, listen to music, watch baseball and root for the Redskins.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
There are no easy choices. Easy choices are long gone.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
The guiding purpose of the government regulator is to prevent rather than to create something.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
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.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
It is decidedly not true that “nice guys finish last,” as that highly original American baseball philosopher, Leo Durocher, was alleged to have said.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
But rules cannot substitute for character.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
In general, corruption tends to exist whenever governments have favors to extend, or something to sell.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
Senator, if I seem clear to you, you must have misunderstood me’.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.
ALAN GREENSPAN -
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