Alan Greenspan Cast Quotations

Economic policymakers face enormous uncertainty. Economic models provide a set of useful tools to frame future outcomes, but as we were reminded repeatedly during our efforts to forecast the economy in 1974 and 1975, models can go off track in myriad ways, ... Objective and thorough analysis ... is the most effective counterweight to this challenge.

We've come a long way through this adjustment process and we're still standing and that's good news, ... is still not doing well but (is) far better given what has happened than I would have forecast six, eight, nine months ago.

How can we ignore the fact that virtually all forecasts of the budget balance have been wide of the mark in recent years?

People don't realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but that's as far as we go. And I've had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that.

An increase in inflation doggedly forecast to follow the ever lower unemployment rate--now the lowest in three decades -- has not occurred,

The determination of global economic activity in recent years has been influenced importantly by capital gains on various types of assets, and the liabilities that finance them. Our forecasts and hence policy are becoming increasingly driven by asset price changes.

We really can't forecast all that well, and yet we pretend that we can, but we really can't.