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Greenspan says housing bubble over

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday 18 May, in his first public U.S. speech since retiring in January, that US consumption could fall now that the US housing market's "extraordinary boom" has ended.

"This has been quite an extraordinary boom," Greenspan said in remarks at the Bond Market Association's 30th anniversary dinner in New York. "Home sales are off, applications are off, everything is going in the same direction. The boom is over, and you can say that with a fairly strong degree of confidence."

Greenspan cautioned that it was too early to determine how skyrocketing energy prices will affect consumer spending or lead to inflation.

"One out of 7 barrels of world oil consumption is consumed on American highways," he said. "People apparently don't change the amount of mileage they drive, they change the vehicles they drive. That of course creates lower consumption ... it eats into purchasing power of other things."

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