black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

If you want to understand geology, study earthquakes. If you want to understand the economy, study the Depression.

Ben Bernanke

Education – lifelong education for everyone – from toddlers to workers well advanced in their careers – is indeed an excellent investment for individuals and society as a whole.
BEN BERNANKE

Career Education Money
A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous ‘helicopter drop’ of money.
BEN BERNANKE

Cutting Helicopters Milton
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.
BEN BERNANKE

Casual Financial Problem Relationship
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
It is not the responsibility of the Federal Bank – nor would it be appropriate – to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their decisions
BEN BERNANKE

Decision Economics Responsibility
If your uniform isn’t dirty, you haven’t been in the game.
BEN BERNANKE

Dirty Game Graduation
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
September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.
BEN BERNANKE

Financial October September
The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.
BEN BERNANKE

Government Technology Wish
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
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.
BEN BERNANKE

Imagination Thinking Years
A collapse in U.S. stock prices certainly would cause a lot of white knuckles on Wall Street. But what effect would it have on the broader U.S. economy? If Wall Street crashes, does Main Street follow? Not necessarily.
BEN BERNANKE

Country Stock Street Wall White
Every effort needs to be made to try and offset the costs of Katrina and Rita by reductions in other government programs, especially those that are wasteful, duplicative and ineffective.
BEN BERNANKE

Effort Government Trying
The benefit of appointing a hawkish central banker is the increased inflation-fighting credibility that such an appointment brings.
BEN BERNANKE

Bankers Benefit Fighting
The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.
BEN BERNANKE

Debt Federal Reserve Reserves
Speaking as somebody who has been happily married for 35 years, I can’t imagine any choice more consequential for a lifelong journey than the choice of a traveling companion.
BEN BERNANKE

Journey Travel Years

If you want to understand geology, study earthquakes. If you want to understand the economy, study the Depression.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

If you want to understand geology, study earthquakes. If you want to understand the economy, study the Depression.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Bernanke Quotes