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Nor Can Private Counterparties Restrict Supplies Of Gold, Another Commodity Whose Derivatives Are Often Traded Over-the-counter, Where Central Banks Stand Ready To Lease Gold In Increasing Quantities Should The Price Rise.

-Alan Greenspan

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Nor Can Private Counterparties

Alan Greenspan

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Nor Can Private Counterparties Restrict Supplies Of Gold, Another Commodity Whose Derivatives Are Often Traded Over-the-counter, Where Central Banks Stand Ready To Lease Gold In Increasing Quantities Should The Price Rise.

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Corruption, Embezzlement, Fraud, These Are All Characteristics Which Exist Everywhere. It Is Regrettably The Way Human Nature Functions, Whether We Like It Or Not. What Successful Economies Do Is Keep It To A Minimum. No One Has Ever Eliminated Any Of That Stuff.

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If We Allow Terrorism To Undermine Our Freedom Of Action, We Could Reverse At Least Part Of The Palpable Gains Achieved By Postwar Globalization. It Is Incumbent Upon Us Not To Allow That To Happen.

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These Days, Even Out Of Office, I Still Read Economic Reports.

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When Trust Is Lost, A Nation's Ability To Transact Business Is Palpably Undermined.

An Almost Hysterical Antagonism Toward The Gold Standard Is One Issue Which Unites Statists Of All Persuasions. They Seem To Sense... That Gold And Economic Freedom Are Inseparable.

But How Do We Know When Irrational Exuberance Has Unduly Escalated Asset Values, Which Then Become Subject To Unexpected And Prolonged Contractions As They Have In Japan Over The Past Decade?

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The Guiding Purpose Of The Government Regulator Is To Prevent Rather Than To Create Something.

I Am Saddened That It Is Politically Inconvenient To Acknowledge What Everyone Knows: The Iraq War Is Largely About Oil.

If We Are To Remain Preeminent In Transforming Knowledge Into Economic Value, America's System Of Higher Education Must Remain The World's Leader In Generating Scientific And Technological Breakthrough, And In Meeting The Challenge To Educate Workers.

The Current Financial Crisis In The Us Is Likely To Be Judged In Retrospect As The Most Wrenching Since The End Of The Second World War.

We Need, In Effect, To Make The Phantom 'lock-boxes' Around The Trust Fund Real.

This Decade Is Strewn With Examples Of Bright People Who Thought They Built A Better Mousetrap That Could Consistently Extract Abnormal Returns From The Financial Markets. Some Succeed For A Time. But While There May Occasionally Be Mis-configurations Among Market Prices That Allow Abnormal Returns, They Do Not Persist.

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As Long As We Issue Fiat Currency, I See No Alternative To A Legal Tender Law.

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The Abandonment Of The Gold Standard Made It Possible For The Welfare Statists To Use The Banking System As A Means To An Unlimited Expansion Of Credit. In The Absence Of The Gold Standard, There Is No Way To Protect Savings From Confiscation Through Inflation. There Is No Safe Store Of Value. Deficit Spending Is Simply A Scheme For The Hidden Confiscation Of Wealth. Gold Stands In The Way Of This Insidious Process. It Stands As A Protector Of Property Rights. If One Grasps This, One Has No Difficulty In Understanding The Statists' Antagonism Toward The Gold Standard.

The Arts Develop Skills And Habits Of Mind That Are Important For Workers In The New Economy Of Ideas.

The True Measure Of A Career Is To Be Able To Be Content, Even Proud, That You Succeeded Through Your Own Endeavors Without Leaving A Trail Of Casualties In Your Wake.

Without Calling The Overall National Issue A Bubble, It's Pretty Clear That It's An Unsustainable Underlying Pattern.

Developing Protectionism Regarding Trade And Our Reluctance To Place Fiscal Policy On A More Sustainable Path Are Threatening What May Well Be Our Most Valued Policy Asset: The Increased Flexibility Of Our Economy, Which Has Fostered Our Extraordinary Resilience To Shocks.

Anything That We Can Do To Raise Personal Savings Is Very Much In The Interest Of This Country.

...our Market System Depends Critically On Trust-trust In The Word Of Our Colleagues And Trust In The Word Of Those With Whom We Do Business.

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Incomplete Knowledge

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I'm A Better Economist Than I Was A Sax Player.

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If I Say Something Which You Understand Fully In This Regard, I Probably Made A Mistake.

Now, I Only Play Very Occasionally, And In Fact, More Piano Than Clarinet Or Sax.

Protectionism Will Do Little To Create Jobs And If Foreigners Retaliate, We Will Surely Lose Jobs.

In General, Corruption Tends To Exist Whenever Governments Have Favors To Extend, Or Something To Sell.

And Whatever Their Publicized Angst Over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons Of Mass Destruction,' American And British Authorities Were Also Concerned About Violence In An Area That Harbors A Resource Indispensable For The Functioning Of The Word Economy. I Am Saddened That It Is Politically Inconvenient To Acknowledge What Everyone Knows: The Iraq War Is Largely About Oil.

Mass Destruction

People Dont Realize That We Cannot Forecast The Future. What We Can Do Is Have Probabilities Of What Causes What, But Thats As Far As We Go. And Ive 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.

Look, I'm Very Much In Favor Of Tax Cuts, But Not With Borrowed Money. And The Problem That We've Gotten Into In Recent Years Is Spending Programs With Borrowed Money, Tax Cuts With Borrowed Money, And At The End Of The Day That Proves Disastrous. And My View Is I Don't Think We Can Play Subtle Policy Here.

I've Been In And Out Of Wall Street Since 1949, And I've Never Seen The Type Of Animosity Between Government And Wall Street. And I'm Not Sure Where It Comes From, But I Suspect It's Got To Do With A General Schism In This Society Which Is Really Becoming Ever More Destructive.

I'm Not Denying That Monopolies Are Terrible Things, But I Am Denying That It Is Readily Easy To Resolve Them Through Legislation Of That Nature.

Significantly Opening Up Immigration To Skilled Workers Solves Two Problems. The Companies Could Hire The Educated Workers They Need. And Those Workers Would Compete With High-income People, Driving More Income Equality.

Deficit Spending Is Simply A Scheme For The 'hidden' Confiscation Of Wealth. Gold Stands In The Way Of This Insidious Process. It Stands As A Protector Of Property Rights.

Regulation Of Derivatives Transactions That Are Privately Negotiated By Professionals Is Unnecessary.

But Rules Cannot Substitute For Character.

Greenspan, Who Knew So Much More Than Most, Knew Far Less Than Most Supposed.

We Will Have More Crises And None Of Them Will Look Like This Because No Two Crises Have Anything In Common Except Human Nature.

It's A Bubble. It Has To Have Intrinsic Value. You Have To Really Stretch Your Imagination To Infer What The Intrinsic Value Of Bitcoin Is. I Haven't Been Able To Do It. Maybe Somebody Else Can.

The Need For Values Is Inbred. Their Content Is Not.

History Demonstrates That Participants In Financial Markets Are Susceptible To Waves Of Optimism. Excessive Optimism Shows The Seeds Of Its Own Reversal In The Form Of Imbalances That Tend To Grow Over Time.

Institutions Of The Newer Participants In Global Finance Had Not Been Tested, Until Recently...recent Crisis Have Underscored Certain Financial Structure Vulnerabilities That Are Not Readily Assuaged In The Short Run.

There Is Nothing To Guarantee The Superior Judgment, Knowledge, And Integrity Of An Inspector Or A Bureaucrat-and The Deadly Consequences Of Entrusting Him With Arbitrary Power Are Obvious.

I Cannot Conceive Of A Politically Feasible Solution To This Problem Which Will Overdo Cutting The Deficit, Where Overdoing Means Harming The Economy. It Might Be Technically Possible, But It Is Not Realistic.

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The More Flexible An Economy, The Greater Its Ability To Self-correct In Response To Inevitable, Often Unanticipated, Disturbances And Thus To Contain The Size And Consequences Of Cyclical Imbalances.

Regulation - Which Is Based On Force And Fear - Undermines The Moral Base Of Business Dealings. It Becomes Cheaper To Bribe A Building Inspector Than To Meet His Standards Of Construction. Protection Of The Consumer By Regulation Is Thus Illusory.

I Do Not Deny That Many Appear To Have Succeeded In A Material Way By Cutting Corners And By Manipulating Associates, Both In Their Professional And In Their Personal Lives. But Material Success Is Possible In This World And Far More Satisfying When It Comes Without Exploiting Others.

Nor Can Private Counterparties Restrict Supplies Of Gold, Another Commodity Whose Derivatives Are Often Traded Over-the-counter, Where Central Banks Stand Ready To Lease Gold In Increasing Quantities Should The Price Rise.

The Free Lunch Has Still To Be Invented.

Without The Triggers, That Tax Cut Is Irreponsible Fiscal Policy. Eventually, I Think That Will Be The Consensus View.

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