Top 247 Quotes & Sayings by Ben Bernanke

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American public servant Ben Bernanke.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
Ben Bernanke

Ben Shalom Bernanke is an American economist who served as the 14th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014. After leaving the Fed, he is a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution During his tenure as chair, Bernanke oversaw the Federal Reserve's response to the late-2000s financial crisis, for which he was named the 2009 Time Person of the Year. Before becoming Federal Reserve chair, Bernanke was a tenured professor at Princeton University and chaired the department of economics there from 1996 to September 2002, when he went on public service leave.

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.
Identity theft is a serious crime that affects millions of Americans each year.
Monetary policy is not a panacea. — © Ben Bernanke
Monetary policy is not a panacea.
It must be awfully frustrating to get a small raise at work and then have it all eaten by a higher cost of commuting.
Many foreclosed homes are neglected or abandoned, as legal proceedings or other factors delay their resale. Deteriorating or vacant properties can, in turn, directly affect the quality of life in a neighborhood, for example, by leading to increases in vandalism or crime.
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.
The best solution to income inequality is providing a high-quality education for everybody. In our highly technological, globalized economy, people without education will not be able to improve their economic situation.
In many spheres of human endeavor, from science to business to education to economic policy, good decisions depend on good measurement.
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.
Growth in U.S. real imports slowed to about 3 percent in 2006, in part reflecting a drop in real terms in imports of crude oil and petroleum products.
Remember that physical beauty is evolution's way of assuring us that the other person doesn't have too many intestinal parasites.
Aggregate statistics can sometimes mask important information.
Stronger regulation and supervision aimed at problems with underwriting practices and lenders' risk management would have been a more effective and surgical approach to constraining the housing bubble than a general increase in interest rates.
No one will lend at a negative interest rate; potential creditors will simply choose to hold cash, which pays zero nominal interest. — © Ben Bernanke
No one will lend at a negative interest rate; potential creditors will simply choose to hold cash, which pays zero nominal interest.
Developments in financial markets can have broad economic effects felt by many outside the markets.
The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short term political concerns.
The Federal Reserve cannot solve all the economy's problems on its own.
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.
It's the price of success: people start to think you're omnipotent.
Smart financial planning - such as budgeting, saving for emergencies, and preparing for retirement - can help households enjoy better lives while weathering financial shocks. Financial education can play a key role in getting to these outcomes.
Because financially capable consumers ultimately contribute to a stable economic and financial system as well as improve their own financial situations, it's clear that the Federal Reserve has a significant stake in financial education.
The Federal Reserve's job is to do the right thing, to take the long-run interest of the economy to heart, and that sometimes means being unpopular. But we have to do the right thing.
Low and stable inflation in many countries is an important accomplishment that will continue to bring significant benefits.
Only a strong economy can create higher asset values and sustainably good returns for savers.
Deflation can be particularly dangerous when a financial system is shaky, with household and corporate balance sheets in poor shape and banks undercapitalized and heavily burdened with bad loans.
If two people always agree, one of them is redundant.
I think one of the lessons of the Depression - and this is something that Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated - was that when orthodoxy fails, then you need to try new things. And he was very willing to try unorthodox approaches when the orthodox approach had shown that it was not adequate.
To be sure, faster growth in nominal labor compensation does not necessarily portend higher inflation.
Our mission, as set forth by the Congress is a critical one: to preserve price stability, to foster maximum sustainable growth in output and employment, and to promote a stable and efficient financial system that serves all Americans well and fairly.
How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?
If you want to understand geology, study earthquakes. If you want to understand the economy, study the Depression.
The crisis and recession have led to very low interest rates, it is true, but these events have also destroyed jobs, hamstrung economic growth and led to sharp declines in the values of many homes and businesses.
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.
Of course, economic forecasts must be revised when new information arrives and are thus necessarily provisional.
Different countries have different kinds of financial structures.
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.
Interest rates are used to achieve overall economic stability.
There are limits to monetary policy. — © Ben Bernanke
There are limits to monetary policy.
The role of liquidity in systemic events provides yet another reason why, in the future, a more system wide or macroprudential approach to regulation is needed.
Clear communication is always important in central banking, but it can be especially important when economic conditions call for further policy stimulus but the policy rate is already at its effective lower bound.
Preventing liquidation of an unbalanced market will leave you in tears.
It's true that the Federal Reserve faces a lot of political pressure and is unpopular in many circles.
I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences... essential to that institution's ability to function effectively and achieve its mandated objectives.
No economy can succeed without a high-quality workforce, particularly in an age of globalization and technical change.
The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.
Textbooks describe economics as the study of the allocation of scarce resources. That definition may be the 'what,' but it certainly is not the 'why.'
History proves... that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse.
Monetary policy cannot do much about long-run growth, all we can try to do is to try to smooth out periods where the economy is depressed because of lack of demand.
The biggest downside of my current job is that I have to wear a suit to work. Wearing uncomfortable clothes on purpose is an example of what former Princeton hockey player and Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence taught economists to call 'signaling.'
The Mexican debt crisis, Latin American debt crisis, the crises of the 1990s, the Wall Street stock market crash, and other events should have reminded us, and did remind us, that financial instability remains a concern, remains a problem.
The failure of Lehman Brothers demonstrated that liquidity provision by the Federal Reserve would not be sufficient to stop the crisis; substantial fiscal resources were necessary.
Achieving price stability is not only important in itself, it is also central to attaining the Federal Reserve's other mandate objectives of maximum sustainable employment and moderate long-term interest rates.
Building a rainy-day fund during good times may not be politically popular, but it can pay off during the bad times. — © Ben Bernanke
Building a rainy-day fund during good times may not be politically popular, but it can pay off during the bad times.
To be sure, the provision of liquidity alone can by no means solve the problems of credit risk and credit losses; but it can reduce liquidity premiums, help restore the confidence of investors, and thus promote stability.
In any given month, a large number of workers are being hired or are leaving their current jobs, illustrating the dynamism of the U.S. labor market.
The ultimate purpose of economics, of course, is to understand and promote the enhancement of well-being.
As an educator myself, I understand the profound effect that good teachers and a quality education have on the lives of our young people.
I come from Main Street, from a small town that's really depressed.
In fact, the world needs more nerds.
Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.
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