Monday, September 17, 2007

FT.com / World - Greenspan alert on US house prices

FT.com / World - Greenspan alert on US house prices

US house prices are likely to fall significantly from their present levels, Alan Greenspan has told the Financial Times, admitting that there was a bubble in the US housing market.

In an interview ahead of the release on Monday of his widely-anticipated memoirs, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve said the decline in house prices “is going to be larger than most people expect”.

But Mr Greenspan said that his successors at the Fed – who meet on Tuesday to set interest rates – would have to be careful not to ease rates too aggressively, because the risk of an “inflationary resurgence” was greater now than when he was Fed chief.

Mr Greenspan said he would expect “as a minimum, large single-digit” percentage declines in US house prices from peak to trough and added that he would not be surprised if the fall was “in double digits”.

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