Deutsch
English
FrançaisSub menu: Home
Home / Index of Authors
Greenspan, Alan
Subscribe to receive the texts of "Greenspan, Alan" as RSS feeds
2 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Alan Greenspan sees capitialism's bad name as unjustified
The free-market economy has improved everyone's lives since its beginnings, writes the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, in the liberal Financial Times Deutschland: "During the past century, for example, competitive-market-driven economic growth created resources far in excess of those required to maintain subsistence. That surplus, even in the most aggressively competitive economies such as America's, has been mainly employed to improve the quality of life: advances in health, greater longevity and pension systems that go with it, a universal system of education and vastly improved conditions of work. We have used much of the substantial increases in wealth generated by our market-driven economies to purchase what most would view as greater civility. ... The often-assailed greed and avarice associated with capitalism are in fact characteristics of human nature, not of market capitalism, and affect all economic regimes."
» full article (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » Economic Policy, » Weltanschauung, » Global
Greenspan's warning
Alan Greenspan, former chairmain of the US Federal Reserve, sketches in the Financial Times a gloomy picture of the ongoing bank crisis, yet warns strongly against further state intervention: "This crisis is different – a once or twice a century event deeply rooted in fears of insolvency of major financial institutions. ... There may be numbers of banks and other financial institutions that, at the edge of defaulting, will end up being bailed out by governments. ... Globalisation is at the root of the past decade's unprecedented surge in world economic activity. ... The economic edifice - market capitalism - that has fostered this expansion is now being pilloried for the pause and partial retrenchment. The cause of our economic despair, however, is human nature's propensity to sway from fear to euphoria and back, a condition that no economic paradigm has proved capable of suppressing. ... We can fend off cries of political despair which counsel the containment of competitive markets. It is essential that we do so. ... The danger is that some governments, bedevilled by emerging inflationary forces, will endeavour to reassert their grip on economic affairs. If that becomes widespread, globalisation could reverse – at awesome cost."
» full article (external link, English)
More from the press review on the subject » Fiscal Policy, » Financial Markets, » Global
© 2005-2012