Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington October 23, 2008. The hearing centered on the role of federal regulators in the Wall Street financial crisis.

Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is sworn in to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington October 23, 2008.

NEW YORK, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday admitted he was "partially" wrong for not trying to oversight credit default swaps, complex trading instruments meant to act as insurance against default for bond buyers.

Greenspan, who has led the U.S. central bank for more than 18 years, told the Congress that the current financial crisis is a "once-in-a-century credit tsunami," and warned U.S. unemployment would rise further.

"Given the financial damage to date, I cannot see how we can avoid a significant rise in layoffs and unemployment," Greenspan said.

Greenspan said that a necessary condition for the crisis to end would be stabilization in home prices, which would not happen in many months in the future. He said the recently approved 700 billion dollars bailout package could serve the need and its impact was already being felt in markets.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino agreed with Greenspan's forecast about unemployment, saying U.S. GDP numbers for the final two quarters of this year would be tough.

The U.S. Department of Labor reported that initial filings for jobless benefits increased last week by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 478,000, higher than expected.

The economy is in a recession and the job market will continue to worsen, analysts said.

On Thursday, the dollar continued rising against the euro and the pound. The euro bought 1.2852 dollars in late New York trading compared with 1.2866 dollars it bought late Wednesday. The pound fell to 1.6124 dollars from 1.6337 dollars.

The dollar also dipped to 1.1598 Swiss francs from 1.1599, and to 96.05 Japanese yen from 97.97. It rose to 1.2598 Canadian dollars from 1.2521 though.