Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspanis an American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. He currently works as a private adviser and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC. First appointed Federal Reserve chairman by President Ronald Reagan in August 1987, he was reappointed at successive four-year intervals until retiring on January 31, 2006, after the second-longest tenure in the position...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth6 March 1926
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Large deficits will result in rising interest rates and an ever-growing ratio of debt service to GDP (gross domestic product),
The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.
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.
Any onset of increased investor caution elevates risk premiums and, as a consequence, lowers asset values and promotes the liquidation of the debt that supported higher asset prices, ... This is the reason that history has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.
helped to lower risk premiums on debt and have contributed importantly to the favorable investment environment.
As I have said previously to this committee, because of the nature of the type of acceleration in productivity and dynamic change that is occurring in the American economy, my first priority would be to allow as much of the surplus to flow through into a reduction in debt to the public,
It is possible to get markets which are too tight, which create inflationary imbalances and ultimately undercut the recovery,
I thought that the initiative that the Senate produced was very important and very effective,
It has been an extraordinary privilege to be able to serve my country at the Federal Reserve, and I would be honored if the Senate saw fit to enable me to continue this association for another four years,
It is becoming increasingly difficult to deny that something profoundly different than the postwar business cycle has emerged in recent years,
Our judgment is that the level of consumption growth...will slow down, and the dramatic expansion in capital investment will slow down, ... Something will eventually change the pattern, but there are a number of different ways that can happen.
While actual CPI inflation has picked up this year, this rise has not been mirrored uniformly in other broad price measures,
Over the past decade, the U.S. economy has benefited from a remarkable acceleration of productivity. But experience suggests that such rapid advances are unlikely to be maintained in an economy that has reached the cutting edge of technology.
Over the last few months, these forces have taken their toll on activity, and evidence has accumulated that the economy has hit a soft patch,