Greenspan sees early end to market crisis

WASHINGTON: Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said financial markets and the economy will recover ���sooner rather than later��� from the worst turmoil in seven decades.

���Trust will eventually reemerge as investors dip hesitantly back into the marketplace,��� Greenspan said on Thursday in a speech at Georgetown University���s law school in Washington. ���From that point, history tells us, financial and economic revival sets in. I suspect it will be sooner rather than later.���

���We are living through the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century,��� Greenspan said on Thursday.

���Financial markets freeze up as an excess of fear displaces a protracted period of what some might call irrational exuberance. Eventually the market freeze will thaw as frightened investors take tentative steps towards reengagement with risk.���

Greenspan, 82, who served 18 years as Fed chief, took office just before the 1987 stock-market crash. He led the central bank during two eight-month-long recessions, the Asian financial crisis, the 2001 terrorist attacks and the bursting of the internet bubble.