YouSaid · the spoken record

Alan Greenspan

lines on the record: 25
first: 2018-11-16
most recent: 2018-11-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, I'm an economist making money per se. It's never been my interest. It turned out that a good fallout, but it was never my real purpose.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Adam peached Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. I mean, I would say on a strictly IQ basis, those two, but they had other flaws, obviously.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is remarkable about the United States? We went up and down. You would have thought that after the 1930s that capitalism was shot, gone, not coming back. And ironically, it got resurrected during World War II, where it was very obvious that the private sector was what essentially won the war. And today the ownership of capital is not as unequivocal as it used to be. The regulation and the taxation and the culture is not what it used to be.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's more to it than just strictly the issue of the simple capitalist thing who are getting more and more regulation. In fact, the one thing I'm waiting to see the consequences of what the current administration's deregulation operations are doing because What we show in the book is examples of the extraordinary broadening of controls I mean, people, this may seem strange to use this example, but to be a florist or something related which has no effect on human life or health, you need a permit. That never was the case.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes, in other words, it was a general rule that... At that time, that the Federal Reserve did not make public what it was going to do. We do now, but not back then. And so the question was what ways could I figure around answering certain questions or not answering them? And I worked up a means of vocabulary which no one could quite understand and were too ashamed to say they don't understand.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody got it wrong, let's say. But the purpose was I didn't find that a surprise. You can't have a crisis of that nature. That is not a surprise.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One, I did not think it was fair, but I never expected it to be fair, and I anticipated that it was going to happen. I just didn't know exactly when. But nobody forecast the 2008 crisis. One of the things I put in the second book I wrote was how the IMF missed it. The Federal Reserve missed it. You go down a whole series of the major forecasting”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was shocked. I was shocked that the price they bid up on my first book, I was shocked by the fees I was getting. Pretty much for a number of years.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, of course. I was writing speeches in the bathtub. The back which is still obviously still a problem was required to lie on my back full time for six weeks by an orthopedist. I ran my business looking up at the ceiling.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said, wait. It won't last. Popularity in Washington is basically related to what it is you do and if you have no, if you don't have 100% control of what it is that happens as a consequence of you doing, you get caught by the fluctuations up and down. My major concern, and I was acutely aware of it, is I was getting much credit, too much of the credit for what actually was going on. And I said, Don't worry about it, it'll come out on the other side.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I actually had met with him quite often during his campaign. I was part of the Reagan for president campaign staff so that I got to work with him fairly closely.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What fascinated was her heroes. And when I read her books, Fountain Head and Then Atlas Rugged, I was caught up in that science thing, which said basically that you can't have anything rational about human emotions. And I had an argument about uncertainty with Ayn Rand, because I met her. And I kept saying that human values are irrational. They're not conceptually put together. And she then proceeded to take me apart piece by piece, showing the contradictions in my position.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, I went to the National Industrial Conference Board. For the first time, I went into the business world. I wasn't really all that interested in it. And at a fairly young age was like 22, was writing articles for the conference board magazine. And I was fascinated by or was getting quoted in the New York Times.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well, I actually was very surprised. I didn't think I was going to be a good student. I knew I did well in math and high school. I wasn't absolutely sure how all I would do in college. It turns out that not only that I graduate summer cum laude, but I had only two B's in shop and gym.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's put it this way. I could have, but I said I'll only be Class B because I sat next to a 15-year-old by the name of Stanley Getz when I was 16. We both had the same saxophone teacher. And I said, my God, this kid is terrific. And I said to myself, if you can't be this good, why do you want to be second best?”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the last thing I could barely pronounce the words at the time. My aspiration was to be a musician. So I went to Juliet for a few years”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the basic problem is fundamentally on the expenditure side so that the issue is, I would say, 90% entitlements. Now, these are, as you know, basically legislated payments to certain groups, irrespective of what they're paying into funds. And we've overdone it. Now the question obviously is, well, if we've overdone it, why don't we just pull it back? That is the economic conclusion. It is not a credible political.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I'm beginning to see the first signs of it. We're seeing it basically in the tightening of the labor markets first, which, as you know, are getting very tight now. We're beginning finally to see average wages rise. And clearly, there's no productivity behind it. Our productivity increase in the last 10 years has averaged under 1% a year. It's a historic low. I might add it's not OE, it's Europe and everybody else as well. You're getting into a system now which has no outcome that's in equilibrium other than inflation and No productivity growth. And that is not something which says we're going to have long-term acceleration and growth.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you can't protect everything. And the point is you can't forecast very accurately. Right now, we've been at extreme period of extremely low real long-term interest rates. And they're beginning now to move up. We'll continue to move up. And that is going to cause the basic turn in the market.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's going to be driven by the fact that the debt is rising dramatically. And it's going to be some curtailments occurring from that, and it's going to feed on itself. What I'm saying, we talk about stagflation. Stagflation is something that happened in the 1980s when you had a situation where both unemployment and inflation were high, something which the original Keynesian model said was not possible. And we're going into that type of period now, if you look at all the guidelines.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Precisely. It's the capital investment which ultimately determines what productivity will be. In fact, our equations show that you can explain it all with the net capital stock that's built up in business plus some measures of educational efficiency. We're not doing it.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, certainly not as a consequence of the tax cut. The tax cut actually did get a buoyancy and was still feeling some of it, but it's nowhere near enough to offset the actual deficit. So there's no way around us without coming to grips. With the expenditure side”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the question is what's the cause of it? And the cause of it is essentially on both the expenditure and on the tax side. I actually fully approve of the tax cuts that were made, but only in the context that it is funded. In other words, we went to a very significant cut in the marginal corporate tax rate, but you can't have a tax cut without finding the revenues elsewhere or you run into problems.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I say a lot of talk, but no realistic movement. I mean, right now we are creating a deficit of a trillion dollars a year that is being added net to the stock of debt. And debt as a percent of GDP is rising very rapidly, and the demographics of the age groups are such is that that's going to accelerate in the immediate future.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's a different form of what we call stagflation. It had some of the characteristics of buoyancy, but underneath it is an erosion which ultimately will disable the economy unless it's corrected.”
2018-11-16 · The David Rubenstein Show · Alan Greenspan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source