If you want to understand geology, study earthquakes. If you want to understand the economy, study the Depression.
BEN BERNANKEThe 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.
More Ben Bernanke Quotes
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If your uniform isn’t dirty, you haven’t been in the game.
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The risk exists that, with aggregate demand exhibiting considerable momentum, output could overshoot its sustainable path, leading ultimately in the absence of countervailing monetary policy action to further upward pressure on inflation.
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I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences… essential to that institution’s ability to function effectively and achieve its mandated objectives.
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If Wall Street crashes, does Main Street follow? Not necessarily.
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Although low inflation is generally good, inflation that is too low can pose risks to the economy – especially when the economy is struggling.
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I don’t think that Chinese ownership of U.S. assets is so large as to put our country at risk economically.
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Nobody really understands gold prices and I don’t pretend to understand them either.
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The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.
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It’s true that the Federal Reserve faces a lot of political pressure and is unpopular in many circles.
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The crisis and recession have led to very low interest rates, it is true, but these events have also destroyed jobs, hamstrung economic growth and led to sharp declines in the values of many homes and businesses.
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The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.
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We do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.
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The more important reason is that the research itself provides an important long-run perspective on the issues that we face on a day-to-day basis.
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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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The financial crisis appears to be mostly behind us, and the economy seems to have stabilized and is expanding again.
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Our mission, as set forth by the Congress is a critical one: to preserve price stability, to foster maximum sustainable growth in output and employment, and to promote a stable and efficient financial system that serves all Americans well and fairly.
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Nobody likes to fail but failure is an essential part of life and of learning. If your uniform isn’t dirty, you haven’t been in the game.
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Achieving price stability is not only important in itself, it is also central to attaining the Federal Reserve’s other mandate objectives of maximum sustainable employment and moderate long-term interest rates.
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I and others were mistaken early on in saying that the subprime crisis would be contained. The causal relationship between the housing problem and the broad financial system was very complex and difficult to predict.
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The basic prescription for preventing deflation is therefore straightforward, at least in principle: Use monetary and fiscal policy as needed to support aggregate spending.
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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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Life is amazingly unpredictable; any 22-year-old who thinks they know where they will be in 10 years, much less in 30, is simply lacking imagination.
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The best approach here, if at all possible, is to use supervisory and regulatory methods to restrain undue risk-taking and to make sure the system is resilient in case an asset-price bubble bursts in the future.
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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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We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don’t think it’s going to drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.
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In the future, my communications with the public and with the markets will be entirely through regular and formal channels.
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