Alan Greenspan Interest Quotations

If we can maintain an adequate degree of flexibility, some of America 's economic imbalances, most notably the large current account deficit and the housing boom, can be rectified by adjustments in prices, interest rates, and exchange rates rather than through more-wrenching changes in output, incomes, and employment.

Lower budget deficits are the surest and most direct way to increase national saving. Higher national saving would help to lower real interest rates, spurring spending on capital goods so as to put cutting-edge technology in the hands of more American workers,

fully appreciate the risk that some households may have trouble meeting monthly payments as interest rates and the macroeconomic climate change.

To date, interest-sensitive spending has remained robust and the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) will have to stay alert for signs that real interest rates have not yet risen enough to bring the growth of demand into line with that of potential supply, even should the acceleration in productivity continue,

I find it utterly inconceivable, frankly, that we can have the type of potential fiscal outlook, which now confronts us over the next 15 to 20 years which, unless addressed, will not have a significant impact on long-term interest rates,

Our operating procedures, as you suggest, do tend to smooth out short-run fluctuations in short-term interest rates,

Large deficits will result in rising interest rates and an ever-growing ratio of debt service to GDP (gross domestic product),

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.

We don't look at stock prices and say, 'If they are rising we have to raise interest rates,' ... To the extent that the stock market affects the economy, we will respond to that.

Because it is a highly leveraged operation and one which requires very sophisticated hedging of interest rate risk, it's imparting a significant potential systemic risk to the American financial system,

To develop a financial center ... the issue isn't interest of developing infrastructure.

is on an unsustainable path, in which large deficits result in rising interest rates and ever-growing interest payments that augment deficits in future years.

If no action is taken at all ... we're going to be confronted within a few years with a marked upward ratcheting of long-term interest rates, which is very debilitating to long-term economic growth,

The Federal Reserve has responded to the balance of market forces by gradually raising the federal funds rate over the past year, ... Certainly, to have done otherwise -- to have held the federal funds rate at last year's level even as credit demands and market interest rates rose -- would have required an inappropriately inflationary expansion of liquidity.

Somewhat to my surprise, this came out as a far more robust relationship, indicating the greater the deficit, the greater the long-run interest rate,

The dramatic increase in the prevalence of interest-only loans, as well as the introduction of other, more-exotic forms of adjustable-rate mortgages, are developments that bear close scrutiny,

I can safely say there is no endeavor to coordinate an interest rate cut,

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,