Alan Greenspan

Alan Greenspan, KBE, PhD (born March 6, 1926) is an American economist and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States. He is considered by many to be the leading authority and key participant concerning American domestic economic and monetary policy. For example, he has been instrumental in how the U.S. government deals with inflation.

Quotations

• "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?", Francis Boyer Lecture of The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C., December 5, 1996 http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/1996/19961205.htm
• "Once stock prices reach the point at which it is hard to value them by logical methodology, stocks will be bought as they were in the late 1920s not for investment but to be unloaded at a still higher price. The ensuing break could be disastrous because panic psychology cannot be summarily altered or reversed by easing money policies." Greenspan in 1959. http://www.safehaven.com/article-171.htm
• "An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense - perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire - that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other." "Gold and Economic Freedom", by Alan Greenspan, 1966.