Ben Bernanke Quotes
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I will maintain the focus on long-term price stability as monetary policy's greatest contribution to general economic prosperity and maximum employment.
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If bankers become overly conservative in response to past lending mistakes - or if examiners force such behavior - it will hurt bankers' own long-term interests and the economy in general.
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The American people are among the most productive in the world. We have the best technologies. We have great universities. We have entrepreneurs.
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Market discipline can only limit moral hazard to the extent that debt and equity holders believe that, in the event of distress, they will bear costs.
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I think one of the lessons of the Depression - and this is something that Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated - was that when orthodoxy fails, then you need to try new things. And he was very willing to try unorthodox approaches when the orthodox approach had shown that it was not adequate.
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The economic repercussions of a stock market crash depend less on the severity of the crash itself than on the response of economic policymakers, particularly central bankers.
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I think that having good data, good statistics-and the United States generally has better macroeconomic statistics than most countries-and having good economists to interpret those data and present the policy alternatives, has a substantially beneficial effect on policymaking in the United States.
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History proves... 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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I have spoken about deficits, and I think deficits are important because they address broad economic and financial stability. We need to talk about that.
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Neighborhoods and communities are complex organisms that will be resilient only if they are healthy along a number of interrelated dimensions, much as a human body cannot be healthy without adequate air, water, rest, and food.
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There is a deficit; I'd like to see it lowered. But it's up to Congress to decide whether that should be done by higher taxes, lower spending or some combination.
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The basic prescription for preventing deflation is straightforward, at least in principle: Use monetary and fiscal policy as needed to support aggregate spending, in a manner as nearly consistent as possible with full utilization of economic resources and low and stable inflation. In other words, the best way to get out of trouble is not to get into it in the first place.
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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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To support continued healthy growth, vigilance in regard to inflation is essential.
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Under a cold turkey strategy, at each policy meeting the Federal Open Market Committee would make its best guess about where it ultimately wants the funds rate to be and would move to that rate in a single step.
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Economic engineering is about the design and analysis of frameworks for achieving specific economic objectives.
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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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In the typical economic recovery, a resurgent housing sector helps fuel reemployment and rising incomes.
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Even if the economy recovers smartly for the rest of this year and the next, the ongoing slack in the economy may still lead to continuing disinflation.
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Deflation can be particularly dangerous when a financial system is shaky, with household and corporate balance sheets in poor shape and banks undercapitalized and heavily burdened with bad loans.
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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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Clearly, it's going to affect the Gulf Coast economy quite a bit.
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I'd throw dollars out of helicopters if I had to, to stimulate the economy.
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Inflation is up, driven by energy prices. Underlying core rates remain low, which is encouraging.