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I generally leave the details of fiscal programs to the Administration and Congress. That’s really their area of authority and responsibility, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to second guess.

Ben Bernanke

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

Dirty Game Graduation
In a manner as nearly consistent as possible with full utilization of economic resources and low and stable inflation. In other words, the best way to get out of trouble is not to get into it in the first place.
BEN BERNANKE

Best Economic Inflation Resources Way
Over the years, the U.S. economy has shown a remarkable ability to absorb shocks of all kinds, to recover, and to continue to grow.
BEN BERNANKE

Kind Success Years
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
I don’t fully understand movements in the gold price.
BEN BERNANKE

Gold Movement Price
A gold standard doesn’t imply stability in the prices of the goods and services that people buy every day, it implies a stability in the price of gold itself.
BEN BERNANKE

Gold People Standard
In the future, my communications with the public and with the markets will be entirely through regular and formal channels.
BEN BERNANKE

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

Financial October September
Among the largest banks, the capital ratios remain good and I don’t expect any serious problems . . . . among the large, internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system.
BEN BERNANKE

Banking Ratio Serious
I am confident that we will meet whatever challenges the future may bring.
BEN BERNANKE

Challenges Confident May Meet
The sources of deflation are not a mystery. Deflation is in almost all cases a side effect of a collapse of aggregate demand.. a drop in spending so severe that producers must cut prices on an ongoing basis in order to find buyers.
BEN BERNANKE

Cutting Ongoing Order
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
If Wall Street crashes, does Main Street follow? Not necessarily.
BEN BERNANKE

Crash Doe Wall
The impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime markets seems likely to be contained.
BEN BERNANKE

Financial Impact Problem
Importantly, in the 1930s, in the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, despite its mandate, was quite passive and, as a result, financial crisis became very severe, lasted essentially from 1929 to 1933.
BEN BERNANKE

Depression Financial Great Result
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.
BEN BERNANKE

Important Mean Strong
One might as well try to perform brain surgery with a sledgehammer.
BEN BERNANKE

Brain might Trying
Economics is a very difficult subject. I’ve compared it to trying to learn how to repair a car when the engine is running.
BEN BERNANKE

Car Running Trying
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.
BEN BERNANKE

Long might Running
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.
BEN BERNANKE

Demand Path Risk
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
With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.
BEN BERNANKE

Incentives Safety Use
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
Indeed, in general, healthy investment returns cannot be sustained in a weak economy, and of course it is difficult to save for retirement or other goals without the income from a job.
BEN BERNANKE

Goal Job Retirement
The crisis in Europe has affected the US economy by acting as a drag on our exports, weighing on business and consumer confidence and pressuring US financial markets and institutions.
BEN BERNANKE

Acting Country Financial Lace
The 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.
BEN BERNANKE

Chance Guidance Inference
The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.
BEN BERNANKE

Debt Federal Reserve Reserves

I generally leave the details of fiscal programs to the Administration and Congress. That’s really their area of authority and responsibility, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to second guess.

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I generally leave the details of fiscal programs to the Administration and Congress. That’s really their area of authority and responsibility, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to second guess.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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