Top 247 Quotes & Sayings by Ben Bernanke - Page 2

All the Federal Reserve can do is make loans against collateral.

Economics has many substantive areas of knowledge where there is agreement, but also contains areas of controversy. That's inescapable.

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.

To the extent that bank panics interfere with normal flows of credit, they may affect the performance of the real economy.

Honest error in the face of complex and possibly intractable problems is a far more important source of bad results than are bad motives.

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

In a slow-growing world that is short on aggregate demand, Germany's trade surplus is a problem.

Well, the U.S., of course, is the world's largest economy. It's about a quarter of the world's output. It's also home to many of the largest financial institutions and financial markets.

You want to put the fire out first and then worry about the fire code.

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.

I came home from school one day, and there was a phone call for me. And I picked up the phone. They said, 'This is the Harvard Admissions Department. We'd like to let you know that you're accepted in the freshman class.' And I said, 'Come on, who is this really?'

I am very proud of my nerd-dom.

In September 2008, the two largest housing mortgage companies called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were government-sponsored enterprises, which hold hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages, because of the losses they took on the mortgages, they essentially became insolvent, and the government had to take them over.

Given the extent of the exposures of major banks around the world to A.I.G., and in light of the extreme fragility of the system, there was a significant risk that A.I.G.'s failure could have sparked a global banking panic.

We should see better and more direct measurements of economic well being.

If the fiscal cliff occurs, I don't think the Federal Reserve has the tools to offset that event.

There are a number of institutions globally where the Federal Reserve typically leads the U.S. effort to work with financial regulators from other countries, and we try to, to the extent possible, establish international standards for how - the amount of capital a bank should hold, for example, or how much.

My proposal that Fed governors should signal their commitment to public service by wearing Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts has so far gone unheeded.

The downturn following the collapse of Japan's so-called bubble economy of the 1980s was not as severe as the Great Depression.

The Fed is totally open.

If you take a candy bar in the short run, it gives you a burst of energy, but after a while, it just makes you fat.

I don't know why there aren't more Depression buffs.

The tax code is very inefficient. Both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code. By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest.

The American people are among the most productive in the world. We have the best technologies. We have great universities. We have entrepreneurs.

It takes about two and a half percent growth just to keep unemployment stable.

The Federal Reserve can only buy Treasuries and agencies, and moreover quantitative easing typically involves buying longer-term Treasuries and agencies in terms of bills, for example.

A little humility never hurts.

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.

The crisis in Europe has affected the U.S. economy by acting as a drag on our exports, weighing on business and consumer confidence, and pressuring U.S. financial markets and institutions.

Central bankers got it right in the United States in 1987 when they avoided deflationary pressures as well as serious trouble in the banking system.

If you are not happy with yourself, even the loftiest achievements won't bring you much satisfaction.

If you're in a car crash, you're mostly involved in trying to not go off the bridge, and later on you say, 'Oh my God!'

In the past, Federal Reserve chairmen have not generally gone directly to the public.

The Fed's independence is critical.

China is growing very quickly and is clearly becoming an important player in the world economy.

After the 1929 crash, the Federal Reserve mistakenly focused its policies on preserving the gold value of the dollar rather than on stabilizing the domestic economy.

The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank.

I got into economics because I wanted to make things better for the average person.

Imperfect substitutability of assets implies that changes in the supplies of various assets available to private investors may affect the prices and yields of those assets.

I was a professor at Princeton University. And, in that capacity, I studied for many years the role of financial crisis in the economy.

A.I.G. was even larger than Lehman, with a substantial presence in derivatives and debt markets, as well as in insurance markets.

After a long period in which the desired direction for inflation was always downward, the industrialized world's central banks must today try to avoid major changes in the inflation rate in either direction.

A collapse in U.S. stock prices certainly would cause a lot of white knuckles on Wall Street.

In the future, my communications with the public and with the markets will be entirely through regular and formal channels.

I've never been on Wall Street. And I care about Wall Street for one reason and one reason only because what happens on Wall Street matters to Main Street.

The amount of currency in circulation is not changing. The money supply is not changing in any significant way.

Long term, I have a lot of confidence in the United States. We have an excellent record in terms of innovation. We have great universities that are involved in technological change and progress. We have an entrepreneurial culture, much more than almost any other country.

I have spoken about deficits, and I think deficits are important because they address broad economic and financial stability. We need to talk about that.

If Australia finds it has a strong Australian dollar, and it has higher unemployment, then it would have to respond, and that would either be by increasing domestic demand or by weakening its own currency.

Well, optimism's a good thing. It - makes people go out and - you know, start businesses and spend and do whatever is necessary to get the economy going.

The Libor system is structurally flawed. It is a major problem for our financial system and for the confidence in the financial system. We need to address it.

The stress on the financial system in the fall of 2007 was significant, but not so significant as to threaten the overall stability of the U.S. economy, although it did lead to the beginning of a recession at the end of 2007.

Actually, I'm a Republican.

Banks will have to win the confidence of their customers through fair dealing, making good loans, and remaining financially healthy.

One would be forgiven for concluding that the assumed benefits of financial innovation are not all they were cracked up to be.

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.

Investment banks manage to go bankrupt through their investment-banking activities, commercial banks manage to go bankrupt through their commercial-banking activities.

The Fed needs an approach that consolidates the gains of the Greenspan years and ensures that those successful policies will continue - even if future Fed chairmen are less skillful or less committed to price stability than Mr. Greenspan has been.

I think most of us would agree that people who have, say, little formal schooling but labor honestly and diligently to help feed, clothe, and educate their families are deserving of greater respect - and help, if necessary - than many people who are superficially more successful.

As you know, in the latter part of 2008 and early 2009, the Federal Reserve took extraordinary steps to provide liquidity and support credit market functioning, including the establishment of a number of emergency lending facilities and the creation or extension of currency swap agreements with 14 central banks around the world.