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

Ben Bernanke

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More quotes by Ben Bernanke

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

Speaking as somebody who has been happily married for 35 years, I can't imagine any choice more consequential for a lifelong journey than the choice of a traveling companion.

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 more important reason is that the research itself provides an important long-run perspective on the issues that we face on a day-to-day basis.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I don't see much evidence of an equity bubble.

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

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

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

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.