Alan Greenspan
American economist and was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States from June 2, 1987 until his retirement on January 31, 2006.
Intensive research in recent years into the sources of economic growth among both developing and developed nations generally point to a number of important factors: the state of knowledge and skill of a population; the degree of control over indigenous natural resources; the quality of a country's legal system, particularly a strong commitment to a rule of law and protection of property rights; and yes, the extent of a country's openness to trade with the rest of the world. For the United States, arguably the most important factor is the type of rule of law under which economic activity takes place. When asked abroad why the United States has become the most prosperous large economy in the world, I respond, with only mild exaggeration, that our forefathers wrote a constitution and set in motion a system of laws that protects individual rights, especially the right to own property. Nonetheless, the degree of state protection is sometimes in dispute. But by and large, secure property rights are almost universally accepted by Americans as a critical pillar of our economy. While the right of property in the abstract is generally uncontested in all societies embracing democratic market capitalism, different degrees of property protection do apparently foster different economic incentives and outcomes.
It's hard to overemphasize how important Ford's deregulation was. True, most of the benefits took years to unfold-rail freight rates, for example hardly budged at first. Yet deregulation set the stage for an enormous wave of creative destruction in the 1980s:...
It did not go without notice that Ayn Rand stood beside me as I took the oath of office in the presence of President Ford in the Oval Office. Ayn Rand and I remained close until she died in 1982, and I'm grateful for the influence she had on my life. I was intellectually limited until I met her.
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.
Once stock prices reach the point at which it is hard to value them by logical methodology, stocks will be bought as they were in the late 1920s not for investment but to be unloaded at a still higher price. The ensuing break could be disastrous because panic psychology cannot be summarily altered or reversed by easing money policies.
When trust is lost, a nation's ability to transact business is palpably undermined.
I really didn't get it until very late in 2005 and 2006.
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.
American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage.
Without calling the overall national issue a bubble, it's pretty clear that it's an unsustainable underlying pattern.
Rising interest rates have been advertised for so long and in so many places that anyone who has not appropriately hedged this position by now obviously is desirous of losing money.
History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.
Globalization was exerting a dis-inflationary impact.
I came to a stark realization: chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits.
The probability of ten consecutive heads is 0.1 percent; thus, when you have millions of coin tossers, or investors, in the end there will be thousands of very successful practitioners of coin tossing, or stock picking.
Greenspan doesn't get out of bed before examining the political consequences.
We had a bubble in housing.
If you look at the speeches he gave just before he left the Fed, it's pretty much “After me - the Deluge. I'm getting out while my reputation's intact”.
Over the years I have had the most contact with Lee Kuan Yew, most recently in 2006, and have always found him impressive, even though we do not always see eye to eye. I met him first when he was George Shultz's guest at the famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) Bohemian Grove, a male only bonding retreat among the redwoods of California.
The Fabians laid the groundwork for modern social democracy, and their influence on the world would end up being at least as powerful as that of Marx.