Alan Greenspan Reason Quotations

The trend of existing home sales has been relatively flat at a reasonable high level for quite a long period of time, and if we can maintain that we are doing well,

We don't endeavor to manipulate the bond market to act as a proxy, ... The major reason is we wouldn't know how.

Financial markets, along with households and businesses, seem to be reasonably well prepared to cope with a transition to a more neutral stance of monetary policy, ... Although many factors may affect inflation in the short-run, inflation in the long-run, it is important to remind ourselves, is a monetary phenomenon.

Although the global economic expansion appears to have been on a reasonably firm path through the summer months, the recent surge in energy prices will undoubtedly be a drag from now on.

Fixed mortgage rates remain at historically low levels and thus should continue to fuel reasonably strong housing demand and, through equity extraction, to support consumer spending as well,

There are sound reasons for concluding that the long-run picture remains bright ... but I would emphasize that we continue to face significant risks in the near term,

weathered reasonably well the steep rise in spot and futures prices for oil and natural gas.

In the face of energy price spike and the erosion of optimism in financial markets, consumer confidence, or sentiment, appears to be holding up reasonably well to date, though there have been some mixed signals of late.

I do think that we have to bring the existing instability to a level of stability reasonably shortly to prevent the contagion from really spilling over and creating some very significant kinds of problems for all of us.

I don't think we did pop the bubble. We did raise interest rates in 1999, and the reason we did that is that real long-term rates were beginning to rise because the economy was beginning to accelerate,

I think that the market is ultimately driven by real forces, ... Once you get a decline started, it's not clear whether people use that as a reason to sell or buy.

Inflationary pressures will be reasonably well contained, so long as productivity is moving at a reasonably good clip,

Despite the disruptions of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, economic activity appears to be expanding at a reasonably good pace as we head into 2006.

Despite some of the risks that I have highlighted, the U.S. economy seems to be on a reasonably firm footing, and underlying inflation remains contained,

... the flexibility of our market-driven economy has allowed us, thus far, to weather reasonably well the steep rise in spot and futures prices for crude oil and natural gas that we have experienced over the past two years,

There are powerful reasons to suspect that the elimination of the double taxation of dividends and cuts in marginal tax rates will elevate long-term productivity, ... If, however, in the process we get a significant increase in deficits, which induce a rise in long-term interest rates, that will be a significant undercutting of the benefits achieved by tax cuts.

Before the crisis broke, there was little reason to question the three decades of phenomenally solid East Asian economic growth, largely financed through the banking system, so long as the rapidly expanding economies and bank credit kept the ratio of non-performing loans to total bank assets low,