Ben Bernanke Quotes
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People saw the Depression as a necessary thing - a chance to squeeze out the excesses, get back to Puritan morality. That just made things worse.
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Certainly there is no way to direct the effects of monetary policy at a single class of assets while leaving other financial markets and the broader economy untouched. One might as well try to perform brain surgery with a sledgehammer.
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The crisis in Europe has affected the U.S. economy by acting as a drag on our exports, weighing on business and consumer confidence, and pressuring U.S. financial markets and institutions.
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The downturn following the collapse of Japan's so-called bubble economy of the 1980s was not as severe as the Great Depression.
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Clear communication is always important in central banking, but it can be especially important when economic conditions call for further policy stimulus but the policy rate is already at its effective lower bound.
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Banks need to continue to lend to creditworthy borrowers to earn a profit and remain strong.
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As long as we find that the energy impact is only temporary ... my guess is that the effects on the overall economy will be fairly modest.
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Interest rates are used to achieve overall economic stability.
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In the future, financial firms of any type whose failure would pose a systemic risk must accept especially close regulatory scrutiny of their risk-taking.
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In the typical economic recovery, a resurgent housing sector helps fuel reemployment and rising incomes.
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I served seven years as the chair of the Princeton economics department where I had responsibility for major policy decisions, such as whether to serve bagels or doughnuts at the department coffee hour.
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Over the past decade a combination of diverse forces has created a significant increase in the global supply of saving -- a global saving glut.
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In any given month, a large number of workers are being hired or are leaving their current jobs, illustrating the dynamism of the U.S. labor market.
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It's the price of success: people start to think you're omnipotent.
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The movement toward a holistic approach to community development has been long in the making, but the housing crisis has motivated further progress.
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According to government ethics rules ... it is permissible for a retired (Fed) governor to speak in public about the economy so long as he or she does not divulge confidential information. I have no indication that he has violated that rule.
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The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.
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Rents should begin to decelerate as the demand for owner-occupied housing stabilizes and the supply of rental units increases.
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The risk that the economy has entered a substantial downturn appears to have diminished over the past month or so.
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I came home from school one day, and there was a phone call for me. And I picked up the phone. They said, 'This is the Harvard Admissions Department. We'd like to let you know that you're accepted in the freshman class.' And I said, 'Come on, who is this really?`
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Quantitatively, outsourcing abroad simply cannot account for much of the recent weakness in the U.S. labor market and does not appear likely to be an .important restraint to further recovery in employment.
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If the fiscal cliff occurs, I don't think the Federal Reserve has the tools to offset that event.
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I think it's generally a bad idea for the Fed to be the arbiter of asset prices. The Fed doesn't really have any better information than other people in the market about what the correct value of asset prices is.
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There are various estimates about the third quarter impact, ... Our CEA (Council of Economic Advisers) numbers are somewhere between a half and one percentage point on growth. That would still probably leave us at a decent rate of growth for the third quarter.