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

Ben Bernanke

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More quotes by Ben Bernanke

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

I am very proud of my nerd-dom.

The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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