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

Ben Bernanke

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More quotes by Ben Bernanke

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

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.

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 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.

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.

Life is amazingly unpredictable any 22-year-old who thinks they know where they will be in 10 years, much less in 30, is simply lacking imagination.

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.

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

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.

The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.

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

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.

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

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.