Ben Bernanke Quotes
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The Federal Reserve has never suffered any losses in the course of its normal lending to banks and, now, to primary dealers.
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If two people always agree, one of them is redundant.
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The inflation objective is explicitly a long-term or medium term objective. It focuses on, for example, core inflation to avoid getting involved in short-term fluctuations in energy prices and the like.
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If your uniform isn't dirty, you haven't been in the game.
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We benefit from foreign direct investment. Many Americans are employed by foreign companies with plants in the United States, for example in the automobile industry. So, trade is a two way street. I think, it is important to protect Americans who lose their jobs, or whose jobs come under pressure from international trade. But, I think, we need to be careful not to embrace economic isolationism.
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The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.
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No one will lend at a negative interest rate; potential creditors will simply choose to hold cash, which pays zero nominal interest.
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Has set the standard for excellence in economic policy-making.
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I don't know why there aren't more Depression buffs.
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Given the central role of effective, firmwide risk management in maintaining strong financial institutions, it is clear that supervisors must redouble their efforts to help organizations improve their risk-management practices...We are also considering the need for additional or revised supervisory guidance regarding various aspects of risk management, including further emphasis on the need for an enterprise-wide perspective when assessing risk.
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Many savers are also homeowners; indeed, a family's home may be its most important financial asset. Many savers are working, or would like to be.
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As you know, in the latter part of 2008 and early 2009, the Federal Reserve took extraordinary steps to provide liquidity and support credit market functioning, including the establishment of a number of emergency lending facilities and the creation or extension of currency swap agreements with 14 central banks around the world.
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Our assessment currently is that the risks to inflation are perhaps the more significant at the moment, and we need to address that.
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The high energy prices are certainly burdening consumer budgets, they are burdening cost structures of firms and certainly continued increases in energy prices are a risk for economic growth going forward.
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Because a person has to be either working or looking for work to be counted as part of the labor force, an increase in the number of people too discouraged to continue their search for work would reduce the unemployment rate, all else being equal - but not for a positive reason.
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The benefit of appointing a hawkish central banker is the increased inflation-fighting credibility that such an appointment brings.
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The biggest downside of my current job is that I have to wear a suit to work. Wearing uncomfortable clothes on purpose is an example of what former Princeton hockey player and Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence taught economists to call 'signaling.'
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So far, the actual actions taken have been relatively modest, but there is some hope, I think, that, going forward, these actions will advance further and we will see more progress in the current account.
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Of course, a decision to take no action at a particular meeting does not preclude action at subsequent meetings.
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The best solution to income inequality is providing a high-quality education for everybody. In our highly technological, globalized economy, people without education will not be able to improve their economic situation.
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There's no magical relationship between inverted yield curves and recession. There's a debate why long-term rates are so low. It's partly a low term premium and a lot of saving looking for a relatively limited number of investments.
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The impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime markets seems likely to be contained.
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Roger made invaluable contributions to the Federal Reserve and to the country.
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The Federal Reserve's job is to do the right thing, to take the long-run interest of the economy to heart, and that sometimes means being unpopular. But we have to do the right thing.