Alan Greenspan Quotes

This is the sort of decision that presidents must make: Hard choices with insufficient information.

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.

All policy is a matter of gains and losses, upsides and downsides.

It is the culture at the Fed [Federal Reserve Board] to seek consensus as distinct from merely recording one's vote.... Unless the chairman has everyone behind him, he can't go very far.

The statesman must weigh the rewards of success against the penalties of failure. And he is permitted only one guess.

Good policy analysis recognizes that physical truth may be poorly or incompletely known. Its objective is to evaluate, order, and structure incomplete knowledge so as to allow decisions to be made with as complete an understanding as possible of the current state of knowledge, its limitations, and its implications.

When a government faces an evil that might be avoided, the usual pattern is to first debate whether or not the evil is real or imagined; then determine how evil it really is; then is it an appropriate function of government to avoid it? Then what are the alternative ways to avoid it? Then what are the costs to avoid it? And finally, is the benefit of avoiding the evil worth the cost? In those cases where it is, it is by this time too late to avoid the evil and discussions shift to ameliorating the evil.

Europe has a lot of problems when there are sudden decisions to take.

Communication has become a fulcrum of policy [of the Federal Reserve]. Policy makers shape expectations and, thus, economic behavior.

The Fed should not be responding to the ups and downs of the markets, and it is certainly not our policy to do so. But when there are significant financial developments, it's incumbent on us to ask ourselves what is causing them.

I will be the first to say that it is always difficult to get monetary policy just right. But the Fed's analytical prowess is top-notch, and our forecasting record is second to none.

I don't think we should run government based on economists' predictions.

The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.

You are always factoring in the economy within the process of creating something, and making decisions that seem both fearless and full of fear.

Decisions are the endless uncertainties of life that we'll not know if they're right until the very end, so do the best you can and hope its right.

The sad truth is that opportunity doesn't knock twice. You can put things off until tomorrow but tomorrow may never come. Where will you be a few years down the line. Will it be everything you dreamed of. We seal our fate with the choices we take, but don't give a second thought to the chances we take.

In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic. All of us, from the Governor of the Bank of England downwards, are now primarily interested in preserving the stability of business, prices, and employment, and are not likely, when the choice is forced on us, deliberately to sacrifice these to outworn dogma, which had its value once, of 3 pounds, 17 shill ings, 10 1/2 pence per ounce. Advocates of the ancient standard do not observe how remote it now is from the spirit and the requirements of the age. A regulated nonmetallic standard has slipped in unnoticed. It exists.

You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.

Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'

If testing costs more than not testing, then don't test.

My mantra about everything that has to do with public policy is: identify and reject the false choice.

The power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power... Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.

No one could make a choice without feeling afraid.

Governing involves choosing and making choices between competing goods.

Count the cost first. Don’t pay too big a price for pursuing minor values.