When Greenspan so patiently drops the truthful answer, Ryan goes "mhm" as if he understands. Stephanie Kelton uses this clip in some presentations:
Greenspan: "There is nothing to prevent the government from creating as much money as it wants."
Committee on the Budget, House of Representatives, March 2, 2005
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNCZHAQnfGU
Greenspan is ultimately talking about MV=Py and why spending is only an issue if resources are not there for money to buy. Allocating resources is what Congress needs to worry about. Paul Ryan needs to kill himself. I'm sure Greenspan has his own reasons for his monetary policies (Atlas Shrugged?), but he's starting with the same truth about money as are MMT'ers. As commenter Steve Greenberg writes:
Wow, even Alan Greenspan acknowledges the truth of MMT. It's a good thing nobody is listening or we would be hearing the sounds of heads exploding all across the country.
Link to the entire 3-hour hearing: https://www.c-span.org/video/?185718-1/ ... cal-issues
Here's a transcript from the description, then for good measure another Greenspan quote:
Paul Ryan: "Having personal retirement accounts is another way of making a future retiree's benefits more secure for their retirement. And also, do you believe personal retirement accounts as a component to a system of solvency does help improve solvency, because when you have a personal retirement account policy, if it is a company with a benefit offset, with that feature in place do you believe that personal retirement accounts can help us achieve solvency for the system and make those future retiree benefits more secure?"
Alan Greenspan: "I wouldn't say the pay-as-you-go benefits are insecure in the sense that there is nothing to prevent the Federal Government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The question is, how do you set up a system which assures that the real assets are created which those benefits are employed to purchase? So it is not a question of security. It is a question of the structure of a financial system which assures that the real resources are created for retirement as distinct from the cash. The cash itself is nice to have, but it has got to be in the context of the real resources being created at the time those benefits are paid and so that you can purchase real resources with the benefits, which of course are cash."
"Central banks can issue currency, a non-interest-bearing claim on the government, effectively without limit. They can discount loans and other assets of banks or other private depository institutions, thereby converting potentially illiquid private assets into riskless claims on the government in the form of deposits at the central bank. That all of these claims on government are readily accepted reflects the fact that a government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. A fiat money system, like the ones we have today, can produce such claims without limit. To be sure, if a central bank produces too many, inflation will inexorably rise as will interest rates, and economic activity will inevitably be constrained by the misallocation of resources induced by inflation. If it produces too few, the economy's expansion also will presumably be constrained by a shortage of the necessary lubricant for transactions. Authorities must struggle continuously to find the proper balance."
Alan Greenspan: Central Banking and Global Finance (January 14, 1997)
https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddoc ... 970114.htm