Alan Greenspan Cutting Quotations

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.

Over the past decade, the U.S. economy has benefited from a remarkable acceleration of productivity. But experience suggests that such rapid advances are unlikely to be maintained in an economy that has reached the cutting edge of technology.

We should not be cutting taxes by borrowing,

We should not be cutting taxes by borrowing, ... We do not have the capability of having both productive tax cuts and large expenditure increases, and presume that the deficit doesn't matter.

We should not be cutting taxes by borrowing, ... We should be cutting taxes by reducing the level of spending and that's an issue that I think is critically on the table.

Without the triggers, that tax cut is irreponsible fiscal policy. Eventually, I think that will be the consensus view.

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.

Despite the tightest labor markets in a generation, more workers report in a prominent survey that they are fearful of losing their jobs than similar surveys found in 1991 at the bottom of the last recession, ... The marked move of capital from failing to technologies to those at the cutting edge has quickened the pace at which job skills become obsolete.

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.