Alan Greenspan Quotes

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 number one problem in today's generation and economy is the lack of financial literacy.

I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.

Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.

The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.

If I've made myself clear, I've misspoken.

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.

Amateurs want to be right. Professionals want to make money.

I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.

Remember what we're looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency, that no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match.

Since I've become a central banker, I've learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.

[Republicans] swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.

Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.

If you think you understand what I am saying you do not understand what I am saying.

How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?

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.

Fear and euphoria are dominant forces, and fear is many multiples the size of euphoria. Bubbles go up very slowly as euphoria builds. Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that, I was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.

The gut-feel of the 55-year old trader is more important than the mathematical elegance of the 25-year old genius.

Rules cannot take the place of character.

The very nature of finance is that it cannot be profitable unless it is significantly leveraged... and as long as there is debt, there can be failure and contagion.

Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world. Fiat money in extremis is accepted by nobody. Gold is always accepted.

Regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary.

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.