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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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More quotes by Ben Bernanke

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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

The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman's famous 'helicopter drop' of money.

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

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.