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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.

Ben Bernanke

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More quotes by Ben Bernanke

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

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

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

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.

One might as well try to perform brain surgery with a sledgehammer.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.