“Weaker currencies abroad mean a strong dollar, and a stronger dollar, together with a weak global environment, is a drag on the U.S. econom.”

If I am confirmed, I am confident that my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee and I will maintain the focus on long-term price stability as monetary policy’s greatest contribution to general economic prosperity and maximum employment.

If you are asking me if I would advocate that the Chinese go to greater flexibility in their exchange rate, I certainly would.

I don’t fully understand movements in the gold price.

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.

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.

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

How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?

It’s true that the Federal Reserve faces a lot of political pressure and is unpopular in many circles.

House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals.

Nobody really understands gold prices and I don’t pretend to understand them either.

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.

By best, I mean when I have a real sense of doing the right thing and doing good for people and the connected universe of everybody.

We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way.

My spiritual life is… sometimes I have access to it and sometimes I don’t. When I do have access to it, it’s usually a sense of my understanding what the best course of action or the best thing for me to do.

I mean being a writer is like being a psychoanalyst, but you don’t get any patients.

I just can’t sit still and meditate; that doesn’t kind of work for me. I don’t even know exactly what it means.

My secret for success? I don’t know what the hell success means.

The [Bob] Dylan sessions were very disorganized, to say the least. I mean, the “Like A Rolling Stone” session I was invited by the producer to watch.

The first generation from the ’50s that were in 1650 [Broadway] were pretty much all crooks,