Alan Greenspan Quotes

Right now we think that rates will stay low, that you'll be able to get a mortgage below seven percent and that's kicked off a refinance boom that's going to put more money in the pockets of consumers.

The Obama administration deserves credit for quickly ending the housing free fall. In particular, Obama empowered the Federal Housing Administration to ensure that households could find mortgages at low interest rates even during the worst phase of the financial panic.

Common man is always benefited by a rate cut.

We've got to make greedy banks pass on interest rate cuts in full, and we've got to see rents coming down.

Until Americans feel that their core asset - their homes - are stabilized, they are not going to have the animal spirits and they will continue to have less buying power.

Housing has led our nation's economic expansion over the past few years, accounting for 16 percent of our Gross Domestic Product. New housing starts and home sales hit record levels from 2003 through 2005.

Our economy isn't going to recover until the housing market finds its footing.

Once the housing market begins to recover, I would phase out the mortgage tax deduction.

Real economic stimulus comes from real investment.

We think if the economy remains weak that we could see mortgage rates trail down and we think that we could see rates below seven percent into early next year.

Inflation is not all bad. After all, it has allowed every American to live in a more expensive neighborhood without moving.

Individual households have become over-dependent on the appreciation of housing as a substitute for savings.

Nothing would assure a recession more than a significant drop in housing prices.

We should be humble about our ability to stimulate the economy with monetary policy.

The Federal Housing Administration has their leaflets there [The National Home Show] showing exactly how much it costs to build a house of this kind and what the monthly payments are. You pay twenty percent down and then pay the remainder over a period of twenty years, which should encourage home owning in this country on a much safer basis than has ever existed before for the average family.

The Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) is like the neutron bomb. It’s going to kill all the people but leave the house standing

A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures.

Economic downturns in the United States generally occur when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to keep inflation in check When the Fed's Open Market Committee believes that it has brought inflation under control, it can start to lower rates and reverse the downturn. But the recession that began in 2007 [The Great Recession] was unusual: since the Fed did not casuse that downturn by tightening monetary policy, it could not reverse it by lowering short term interest rates. The downturn was the result of market mispricing assets, including financial assets such as equities and mortgage-backed securities and real assets such as housing.

The impact of low interest rates is broad and deep. Many Americans rely on interest income from their savings to help cover their cost of living.

When the time comes to raise rates, I do think there will be some benefits that flow through to savers.

Every loan that we did in the City of Detroit in the 10 years they studied - between 2005 and 2014 - were conventional FHA, VA loans with average interest rates of 6%.

When you feel house poor, you don't buy anything. Housing immediately impacts the job numbers because there are so many housing-related jobs within the industry, and in adjacent industries.

If a small, rural town in Montana had just five or 10 people move back home, that would be five or 10 homes that either had to be purchased or built - that creates construction jobs.

Higher asset prices increase wealth and, with a lag, induce higher spending.

In June 2005, mortgage rates were at 40-year lows, and risk premiums on mortgage securities were at all-time lows. Once the banks migrated to the subprime area, there was little else that could be done to send housing prices higher.