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Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Sunday ruled out the chance of a US default following S&P's decision to downgrade America's credit rating. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default" said Greenspan on NBC's Meet the Press. "What I think the S&P thing did was to hit a nerve that there's something basically bad going on, and it's hit the self-esteem of the United States, the psyche" said Greenspan.

Former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, has lashed out at America's younger workforce, saying they don't match up to the 'baby boom' generation. Mr Greenspan said the U.S. is in the process of seeing the baby boomers, which he called 'the most productive, highly skilled, educated part of our labour force' retire. 'They are being replaced by groups of young workers who have regrettably scored rather poorly in international educational match-ups over the last two decades,' he added in the interview with Globalist. He went on to say how the average income of U.S. households

Fed Chairman Bernanke told congress today: ‘Gold isn’t money’ But Bernanke's predecessor - former Fed chair Alan Greenspan - disagrees. As I noted in 2009: Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Antal Fekete has argued for years that gold is the ultimate - and only - safe haven when things really hit the fan. For example, in 2007 Fekete wrote: The grand old man of the New York Federal Reserve bank’s gold department, the last Mohican, John Exter explained the devolution of money (not his term) using the model of an inverted pyramid, delicately balanced on its apex at the bottom consisting...

The Federal Reserve's massive stimulus program had little impact on the US economy besides weakening the dollar and helping US exports, Federal Reserve Governor Alan Greenspan told CNBC Thursday. In a blunt critique of his successor, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Greenspan said that the $2 trillion in quantative easing over the past two years had done little to loosen credit and boost the economy.

Very rarely do I watch the cheerleaders and spinmeisters on CNBC. I used to be hooked like most, but got turned off by the daily walk in fantasyland and liberal political posturing. Much to my surprise, I found myself glued to a recent interview with the maestro, Alan Greenspan, on none other than CNBC. Shockingly, I found an ally regarding my economic thesis and approach to the financial markets. As you know, I believe that THINGS are not improving. As a matter of fact, they’re sliding deeper and deeper into the abyss. (Thus, preservation of capital is paramount.) However, most...

The debt and deficit problem in the US is so serious that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan finds himself in the position of recommending the highest tax rates in more than a decade. In an interview with CNBC, the former central bank chief described himself as a "small government, free-market economist" who nonetheless believes that in order to raise revenue and close the debt gap, 1990s-era taxes must be reinstituted. It's a measure, he said, of how serious the problem has become. "The fact that I am in favor of going back to the Clinton tax structure is merely...

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is stepping up his call for Congress to let the Bush-era tax cuts lapse. In an appearance Sunday on ABC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Greenspan used his strongest words yet to urge lawmakers to let them expire. The risk of a U.S. debt crisis, he said, is just too big. Mr. Greenspan, who retired from the Federal Reserve in 2006, had endorsed the cuts back in 2001 championed by then-President George W. Bush. “This crisis is so imminent and so difficult that I think we have to allow the so-called Bush tax cuts all to...

Greenspan Compares Dodd-Frank To The Economy-Crushing Wage And Price Controls Of The 1970s Meredith Lepore and Gregory White Mar. 29, 2011, 3:56 PM Image: AP Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan believes the Dodd-Frank Act is not robust enough to handle the intricacies of the massive, modern financial system and that its implementation could cause major problems, according to his piece in the FT. Greenspan cites several examples of the new regulations failings: * Ford had to stop an asset backed security auction because it couldn't get a credit rating; The SEC eventually intervened. * Debit card fees may stop...

LONDON () – Sweeping regulation introduced by the US to prevent future financial crises could create major "market distortions" ex-Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan wrote in Wednesday's Financial Times. The former bank chief slammed the Dodd-Frank act, which imposes wide-ranging and strict new checks on financial institutions, for failing to "capture the degree of global interconnectedness." "The act may create the largest regulatory-induced market distortion since America's ill-fated imposition of wage and price controls in 1971," warned Greenspan, who was Fed boss from 1987 to 2006. The economist has been widely accused of having encouraged the recent US housing bubble...

Iceland’s special prosecutor into the banking crisis has confirmed that raids have taken place today and that arrests have been made. The Central Bank of Iceland is among the institutions under investigation. Special Prosecutor, Olafur Thor Hauksson told Visir.is that house searches are taking place in at least three places today as part of investigations into the central bank, MP Bank and Straumur Bank......

Greenspan: 'Prove I Was Wrong' In an interview with Kelly Evans, Alan Greenspan discusses the dangers of current fiscal policy while challening his critics to prove him wrong on any decision he made as Fed Chairman.

It seems gold bugs have a new convert in the shape of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan. He told the Council for Foreign Relations yesterday that ‘Fiat money has no place to go but gold’ in response to questions about why gold was hitting new highs (and silver for that matter, although not all-time highs just yet). Mr Greenspan added that he’d thought a lot about gold prices over the years and decided the supply and demand explanations treating gold like other commodities ’simply don’t pan out’ and so he concluded that gold is simply different.

Taxes must rise to fight budget deficit: Greenspan 10:32am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Taxes must rise while fiscal stimulus needs to be wound down in order to reduce the U.S. budget deficit and allow private investment to expand, said former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan on Wednesday. "I am in favor for the first time in my memory of raising taxes," Greenspan told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York He warned that the deficit, swollen by massive stimulus spending, was crowding out capital investment. We "must find a way to simmer down...

Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, supported the Bush tax cuts originally but with warnings that he said were ignored. It was not enough, it seems, for Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman and a self-described lifelong Republican libertarian, to call for stringent government regulation of giant banks, as he did a few months ago. Now Mr. Greenspan is wading into the most fierce economic policy debate in Washington — what to do with the tax cuts adopted, in large part because of his implicit backing, under President George W. Bush — with a position not only contrary to...

…and we continue to talk ourselves off the edge of the cliff. For the second week in a row Meet The Press trotted out the most financially incompetent of the financially incompetent and placed them on their undeserving pedestal. Last week it was Tim Geithner, the veritable fox in the hen house of the financial crisis. This week it was Alan Greenspan, one of the grand orchestrator’s of our financial industry’s deregulation and the most vocal advocate of the virus that is neoliberalism. This man has poisoned our economy for almost 5 decades (and he has admitted that his models...

Amid worries about a slowdown in economic recovery, Mr Greenspan said: "We're in a pause in a recovery, a modest recovery but a pause in the modest recovery feels like a quasi-recession." Questioned on NBC's Meet the Press programme about whether the US could slide into another recession he said: "It is possible if home prices go down. Home prices, as best we can judge, have really flattened out in the last year."

WASHINGTON – Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says he thinks the economy is having a modest recovery, but right now there's a "pause" in that recovery, so it feels like a "quasi-recession." Greenspan says long-term unemployment is pulling the economy apart even though large banks are doing much better and large companies are in excellent shape.

Treasury Secretary Says Letting Bush Tax Cuts for Rich Expire Will Not Slow Economic Growth July 24, 2010 6:00 PM In an exclusive interview on ABC News’ "This Week" to air Sunday, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner said the White House would push to let the Bush tax cuts expire for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and families making more than $250,000, but keep them for middle and lower income Americans. “We think that's the responsible thing to do,” Geithner said, “because we need to make sure we can show the world that they're willing as a...

LONDON (CNNMoney.com) -- Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan believes Congress should let the tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush expire for all Americans in order to address the widening deficit, according to a TV interview airing Friday. "They should follow the law and let them lapse," Greenspan told Bloomberg TV's Judy Woodruff. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are due to expire at the end of the year. President Obama had promised to make them permanent for families making less than $250,000. (Read 'Bush tax cuts up in the air') But faced with growing fiscal challenges, there's...

Greenspan: Chance of Double Dip Looms as Recovery Pauses Monday, July 12, 2010 03:17 PM By: Dan Weil The economy is most likely in a pause, but a double-dip recession can’t be ruled out, says former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. He also opposes the financial reform bill in its present form, saying it would slash bank lending. As for the economy, “Of course, there’s a possibility (of a double dip),” Greenspan told CNBC. But then again, the ex-Fed chairman is famous for taking both sides of an issue. “The trouble is there are always possibilities in both directions when...