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Investment banks manage to go bankrupt through their investment-banking activities, commercial banks manage to go bankrupt through their commercial-banking activities.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

In the future, my communications with the public and with the markets will be entirely through regular and formal channels.

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.

Our mission, as set forth by the Congress is a critical one: to preserve price stability, to foster maximum sustainable growth in output and employment, and to promote a stable and efficient financial system that serves all Americans well and fairly.

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.

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.