Quote

If you want to understand geology, study earthquakes. If you want to understand the economy, study the Depression.

Ben Bernanke

Change background

T

T

T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Born: December 13

Ben Shalom Bernanke

Benjamin Shalom Bernanke

More quotes by Ben Bernanke

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

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.

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

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

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.

Under a cold turkey strategy, at each policy meeting the Federal Open Market Committee would make its best guess about where it ultimately wants the funds rate to be and would move to that rate in a single step.

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.

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

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.

Nobody really understands gold prices and I don't pretend to understand them either.

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.

It's the price of success: people start to think you're omnipotent.

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

The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.

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

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

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

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.