Alan Greenspan Change Quotations

The changes in the budget outlook over the past several years are truly remarkable, ... We need to resist those policies that could readily resurrect the deficits of the past and the fiscal imbalances that followed in their wake.

I realize what that does to competitiveness, but that's the way markets work efficiently. In other words, to prevent the exchange rates from moving creates all sorts of distortions.

The markets are demanding that we change outdated statutory limitations that stand in the way of more efficiently and effectively delivering financial services to the public, ... The Federal Reserve agrees and urges prompt enactment of financial modernization legislation.

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.

This schedule change avoids a meeting that spans the terms of two chairmen,

So long as foreigners continue to seek ever-increasing quantities of dollar investments in their portfolios, as they obviously have been, the exchange rate for the dollar will remain firm,

Changes in consumer confidence will require close scrutiny in the period ahead, especially after the steep falloff of recent months,

With regard to margin requirements, studies suggest that changes in such requirements have no appreciable and predictable effect on stock prices, ... Nonetheless, the Federal Reserve recognizes that considerable risks can be involved in the purchase of equity on margin, especially in volatile markets, and believes lenders and borrowers need to assess carefully the risks they are assuming through the use of margin.

no doubt that the current stance of policy ? will need to be changed at some point.

Despite the combination of somewhat slower growth of productivity in recent quarters, higher energy prices, and a decline in the exchange rate for the dollar, core measures of consumer prices have registered only modest increases,

When we see significant, dramatic changes ... we are skeptical as indeed we should be, ... bring together all of the facts we can marshal and the most sophisticated insights to explain those facts that we can.

Threats of deflation, which were a significant concern last year, by all indications are no longer an issue before us, ... That clearly is a change that's occurred in the last number of weeks, and it's a change ... that's been long overdue and is most welcome.

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,

dramatic demographic change is certain to place enormous demands on our nation's resources.

heed fully the Chinese position on exchange rate reform.

Let me say this anyway on the record: We do not and have not been targeting stock prices for the purposes of endeavoring to stabilize this economy, ... We react if and when stock market price changes impact on the economy. We respond to the economy.

The economy is turning, and credit comes in with a lag, ... To the extent that a number of small firms are finding it difficult to get the credit they need at a price they can afford, that's likely to change for the better.

Because it is difficult to suppress growing market exuberance when the economic environment is perceived as more stable, a highly flexible system needs to be in place to rebalance an economy in which psychology and asset prices could change rapidly,

As the value of assets and liabilities have risen relative to income, we have been confronted with the potential for our economies to exhibit larger and perhaps more abrupt responses to changes in factors affecting the balance sheets of households and businesses,

If we can maintain an adequate degree of flexibility, some of America 's economic imbalances, most notably the large current account deficit and the housing boom, can be rectified by adjustments in prices, interest rates, and exchange rates rather than through more-wrenching changes in output, incomes, and employment.