Greenspan On Oil: Deal With It
US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said the world would have to learn to live with high oil prices and their negative impact on economic growth "for some time to come".
"Although the global economic expansion appears to have been on a reasonably firm path through the summer months, the recent surge in energy prices will undoubtedly be a drag from now on," Greenspan told business leaders here.
"In the United States, Japan and elsewhere, the effect on growth would have been greater had oil not declined in importance as an input to world economic activity since the 1970s," he said in a speech devoted to energy issues.
"We and the rest of the world doubtless will have to live with the geopolitical and other uncertainties of the oil markets for some time to come."
Greenspan also said the impact of high oil prices on economic growth and inflation was likely to be less severe than during the 1970s oil price spikes.
Taking into account inflation, the average price of crude oil was still below the peak of February 1981 in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, when oil hit the equivalent of 75 dollars a barrel in today's prices.
Oil is only two-thirds as important as an input into world gross domestic product now as it was three decades ago, he noted.
This meant the recent surge in prices "is likely to prove significantly less consequential to economic growth and inflation than the surge in the 1970s."
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