“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.”

The Fed is totally open.

I don’t think that Chinese ownership of U.S. assets is so large as to put our country at risk economically.

I am very proud of my nerd-dom.

The financial crisis appears to be mostly behind us, and the economy seems to have stabilized and is expanding again.

In the future, my communications with the public and with the markets will be entirely through regular and formal channels.

While rising delinquencies and foreclosures will continue to weigh heavily on the housing market this year, it will not cripple the U.S.

It’s the price of success: people start to think you’re omnipotent.

Investment banks manage to go bankrupt through their investment-banking activities, commercial banks manage to go bankrupt through their commercial-banking activities.

Economics is a highly sophisticated field of thought that is superb at explaining to policymakers precisely why the choices they made in the past were wrong. About the future, not so much.

The economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long run, we are all dead. If he were around today he might say that, in the long run, we are all on Social Security and Medicare.

Not all information is beneficial.

So it’s important, as it affects overall levels of production and employment in the U.S. There are many domestic industries doing well in the United States, notwithstanding a strong dollar.

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.

Under current law, on January 1, 2013, there’s going to be a massive fiscal cliff of large spending cuts and tax increases.

The people who best use their advantages, or overcome adversity, and work honestly are those most worthy of admiration.

The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.

If I were on a committee, I’d be wasting my time.

Democracy is not about making speeches. It is about making committees work.

Minnesota has a proud tradition of having two Senators on the Ag committee – a tradition I’d like very much to continue.

There’s no committee that says, ‘This is the type of person who can change the world – and you can’t.

The Committee supports the idea that there should be, within the University of California

Now the bigots have to get creative. Good luck coming up with slurs for Chechens. Go back where you came from, Ushanka head.

Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.

I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities – and found no statues of Committees.