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September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.

Ben Bernanke

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.
BEN BERNANKE

Choices Fields Past
The amount of currency in circulation is not changing. The money supply is not changing in any significant way.
BEN BERNANKE

Currency Significant Way
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.
BEN BERNANKE

Bankers Crash Economics
A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous ‘helicopter drop’ of money.
BEN BERNANKE

Cutting Helicopters Milton
…the Federal Reserve has the capacity to operate in domestic money markets to maintain interest rates at a level consistent with our economic goals
BEN BERNANKE

Goal Investing Levels
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.
BEN BERNANKE

Coffee Responsibility Years
The risk that the economy has entered a substantial downturn appears to have diminished over the past month or so.
BEN BERNANKE

Months Past Risk
Although low inflation is generally good, inflation that is too low can pose risks to the economy – especially when the economy is struggling.
BEN BERNANKE

Economy Risk Struggle
If Wall Street crashes, does Main Street follow? Not necessarily.
BEN BERNANKE

Crash Doe Wall
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.
BEN BERNANKE

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

Lessons Long Recovery
Not all information is beneficial.
BEN BERNANKE

Beneficial Information
The basic prescription for preventing deflation is therefore straightforward, at least in principle: Use monetary and fiscal policy as needed to support aggregate spending.
BEN BERNANKE

Business Principle Support
I don’t see much evidence of an equity bubble.
BEN BERNANKE

Bubbles Equity Evidence
Both humanity’s capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history.
BEN BERNANKE

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

Cutting Important Law

September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.

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September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.

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