WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said today he saw "something different" in the current state of the US economy but denied this meant there was now some new economic era.
"I've been around much too long to experience another new era, but there is no question that there is something different about what is going on in this economy. ... We have not had ... seven years of business cycle expansion in which not only did the underlying forces of destabilization not occur, but things are improving," he told a subcommittee of the House Banking Committee.
Economists have debated whether the US economy, enjoying low inflation and unemployment, may have entered some so-called "new era" in which productivity gains from technology have killed the threat of inflation.
