Ben Bernanke Quotes
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I've never been on Wall Street. And I care about Wall Street for one reason and one reason only because what happens on Wall Street matters to Main Street.
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A gold standard doesn't imply stability in the prices of the goods and services that people buy every day, it implies a stability in the price of gold itself.
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The prospective increase in the budget deficit will place at risk future living standards of our country. As a result, I think it would be very desirable to take concrete steps to lower the prospective path of the deficit.
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The public in many countries is understandably concerned by the commitment of substantial government resources to aid the financial industry when other industries receive little or no assistance. This disparate treatment, unappealing as it is, appears unavoidable.
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Importantly, in the 1930s, in the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, despite its mandate, was quite passive and, as a result, financial crisis became very severe, lasted essentially from 1929 to 1933.
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However, if I am confirmed to this position my first priority will be to maintain continuity with the policies and policy strategies established during the Greenspan years.
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Economic science concerns itself primarily with theoretical and empirical generalizations about the behavior of individuals, institutions, markets, and national economies. Most academic research falls in this category.
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There's no denying that a collapse in stock prices today would pose serious macroeconomic challenges for the United States. Consumer spending would slow, and the U.S. economy would become less of a magnet for foreign investors. Economic growth, which in any case has recently been at unsustainable levels, would decline somewhat. History proves, however, that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse.
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A collapse in U.S. stock prices certainly would cause a lot of white knuckles on Wall Street. But what effect would it have on the broader U.S. economy? If Wall Street crashes, does Main Street follow? Not necessarily.
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Fostering transparency and accountability at the Federal Reserve was one of my principal objectives when I became Chairman in February 2006.
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A further jump in energy prices or a more pronounced reaction to those increases in prices that have already occurred could test the strength of the expansion.
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Indeed, I would argue that, in situations of considerable slack, growth that is generated solely by increased productivity, and that is unaccompanied by substantial employment growth, may possibly require monetary ease, rather than monetary tightening, in the short run.
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The sources of deflation are not a mystery. Deflation is in almost all cases a side effect of a collapse of aggregate demand.. a drop in spending so severe that producers must cut prices on an ongoing basis in order to find buyers.
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Impact on consumer spending and production broadly will be modest.
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In September 2008, the two largest housing mortgage companies called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were government-sponsored enterprises, which hold hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages, because of the losses they took on the mortgages, they essentially became insolvent, and the government had to take them over.
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The Libor system is structurally flawed. It is a major problem for our financial system and for the confidence in the financial system. We need to address it.
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In these circumstances, the FOMC judged that some further firming of monetary policy may be necessary, an assessment with which I concur.
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My proposal that Fed governors should signal their commitment to public service by wearing Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts has so far gone unheeded.
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The decline in home equity makes it more difficult for struggling homeowners to refinance and reduces the financial incentive of stressed borrowers to remain in their homes.
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I think policy is currently quite accommodative. I think it can remain quite accommodative for a while to come.
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I do think there is some chance we will see increased private sector savings in the next year or two if housing prices were to moderate.
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The Mexican debt crisis, Latin American debt crisis, the crises of the 1990s, the Wall Street stock market crash, and other events should have reminded us, and did remind us, that financial instability remains a concern, remains a problem.
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Although the U.S. economy has managed modest real growth through 2002 and into 2003, most economists agree that a strong and well-balanced recovery will require a greater contribution from the business sector, in the form of increased capital investment and hiring.
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The greatest single cause of the fiscal surplus of the 1990s was the stock market bubble, which led to an unsustainably high level of economic activity and tax revenues.