Ben Bernanke Quotes

For the first time the committee [Federal Reserve] was using communication — mere words — as its primary monetary policy tool.

The Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession posed daunting new challenges for central banks around the world and spurred innovations in the design, implementation, and communication of monetary policy.

I'm just opposed to a pure inflation-only mandate in which the only thing a central bank cares about is inflation and not employment.

In the 1960s, and stretching back to the 1930s, it was felt by many economists that easy money is a reliable way to increase employment.

Bernanke and company are trying to reflate the economy with almost stated objective of inflation at 2 percent and higher in order to provide some type of safety margin for a future recession. That's where they want to go.

Well, I think as long as people are talking about stimulus, I think the Fed will be thinking about cutting rates because monetary policy is the better way to go because you can turn it on and turn it off.

I never liked quantitative easing. It's misunderstood by almost everybody. Flattening the yield curve is not stimulative; flattening the yield curve is anti-stimulative.

The nation can't count on the Fed when the Fed can't count.

Communication has become a fulcrum of policy [of the Federal Reserve]. Policy makers shape expectations and, thus, economic behavior.

True enough, the Fed needs radical reforms. In particular, it needs to replace its failed forecasting models and be rid of the academics who overwhelm the Fed system.

In effect, there has been a significant shortfall in the overall amount of monetary policy stimulus since early 2009.

The greatest economic power might in fact remain in the hands of the Federal Reserve. Economists credit the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates at historic lows with helping to pump up the economy and bring unemployment down.

When it comes to policies of central bankers, the biggest systemic risk we have... are those policies.

An important instrument of economic policy-making in a market economy is credible, consistent, and timely communication.

The best way that a central bank can support growth on a durable basis is to ensure inflation is low, stable - there is financial stability - and that is the role that the central bank plays.

The government must do all it can to help reduce interest rates for business.

The Fed is the major U.S. firefighter. It's not the Treasury. It's not the Congress. We certainly saw that vividly in 2008.

Every central banker in the world pays attention to credit growth, but not in the U.S.

It's pointless to talk to Fed members about economics because they are academics who believe in money-printing. Some of them believe they didn't print enough, and so with these kinds of people, it is like running to the pope. What do you want to tell them?

To minimize market uncertainty and achieve the maximum effect of its policies, the Federal Reserve is committed to providing the public as much information as possible about the uses of its balance sheet, plans regarding future uses of its balance sheet, and the criteria on which the relevant decisions are based.

Monetary policy has less room to maneuver when interest rates are close to zero, while expansionary fiscal policy is likely both more effective and less costly in terms of increased debt burden when interest rates are pinned at low levels.

I think the Fed is not designed to have effective tools to deal with the economy. It should settle for just controlling the money supply. And - if it insists, it can worry about inflation.

Long before folks fretted the demise of 'quantitative easing,' I fretted its existence. It proved the reverse of its image, an antistimulus, and we've done okay not because of it, but despite it.

To me, a wise and humane policy is occasionally to let inflation rise even when inflation is running above target.

I don't know of any President, now or in the past, who does not favor lower interest rates. That's the American way.