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If Wall Street crashes, does Main Street follow? Not necessarily.

Ben Bernanke

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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.

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.

The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.