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Brookings Papers on Economic Activity – The Crisis, by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan

The Crisis, Alan Greenspan, Second Draft: March 9, 2010

  • “To prevent a future financial crisis, the primary imperative must be increased regulatory capital and liquidity requirements on banks and significant increases in collateral requirements for globally traded financial products, irrespective of the financial institutions making the trades, Greenspan says. He offers his views about regulatory reform, reflecting on moral hazard and how to address the “too big to fail” problem, which he re-terms “too interconnected to be liquidated quickly.” He knocks the idea of a “systemic regulator,” part of a package of reforms currently being discussed on Capitol Hill, asserting that asset bubbles cannot be prevented and trying to diffuse them would in fact stunt economic growth. “Unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some form of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be infeasible. Assuaging their aftermath seems the best we can hope for. Policies, both private and public, should focus on ameliorating the extent of deprivation and hardship caused by deflationary crises,” he writes.”
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