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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

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 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 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.

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

I am very proud of my nerd-dom.

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

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 Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.