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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

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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.

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.

The financial crisis appears to be mostly behind us, and the economy seems to have stabilized and is expanding again.

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

I don't think that Chinese ownership of U.S. assets is so large as to put our country at risk economically.

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.

The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.

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

To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.

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.

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.

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.

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

We do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.

Economics is a very difficult subject. I've compared it to trying to learn how to repair a car when the engine is running.

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