Ben Bernanke Quotes
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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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A forecast about the future evolution of policy, not an unconditional commitment.
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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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High levels of homeownership have been shown to foster greater involvement in school and civic organizations, higher graduation rates, and greater neighborhood stability.
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Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.
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...the Federal Reserve has the capacity to operate in domestic money markets to maintain interest rates at a level consistent with our economic goals.
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I am particularly pleased to see that the Bendheim Center for Finance is thriving.
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I was a professor at Princeton University. And, in that capacity, I studied for many years the role of financial crisis in the economy.
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The financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007 was an extraordinarily complex event with multiple causes.
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Now that I'm a civilian again, I can once more comment on economic and financial issues without my words being put under the microscope by Fed watchers.
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To the extent that bank panics interfere with normal flows of credit, they may affect the performance of the real economy.
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The Federal Reserve can only buy Treasuries and agencies, and moreover quantitative easing typically involves buying longer-term Treasuries and agencies in terms of bills, for example.
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We should see better and more direct measurements of economic well being.
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The more guidance a central bank can provide the public about how policy is likely to evolve the greater the chance that market participants will make appropriate inferences.
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Under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.
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There are two possible mistakes: One is to go on too long, and one is not to go on long enough. And, it's a very difficult balancing act.
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The Federal Reserve, like other central banks, wields powerful tools; democratic accountability requires that the public be able to see how and for what purposes those tools are being used.
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It's been a resilient economy, it's responded well and job creation has proceeded apace.
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Of course, economic forecasts must be revised when new information arrives and are thus necessarily provisional.
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Not all information is beneficial.
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The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.
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Small businesses have played an important role in fueling past economic recoveries.
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Both humanity's capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history.
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Among the largest banks, the capital ratios remain good and I don’t expect any serious problems . . . . among the large, internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system.