Janet Yellen Quotes

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.

If you move up the timetable of when we disclose the transcript of our Open Market Committee, … you will affect what is said and the way that it is said.

The Fed [Federal Reserve System], whether it likes it or not, is required to provide adequate reserves to the banking system in order for the government to finance its needs, even when that is inflationary.

The Federal Reserve, like other central banks, wields powerful tools; democratic accountability requires that the public be able to see how and for what purposes those tools are being used.

The Fed needs an approach that consolidates the gains of the Greenspan years and ensures that those successful policies will continue - even if future Fed chairmen are less skillful or less committed to price stability than Mr. Greenspan has been.

I’ve always been a little nervous about the Fed. Quite frankly, I’m a little nervous about the degree of their independence.

We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it

The country needed someone credible to fight inflation and Volker was the man for the job…. He understood that the government had to establish credibility in order to give policy makers flexibility when they needed it.

The Federal Reserve has an official commitment to two different policies. One is to prevent inflation from getting too high. The second is to maintain high employment... the European Central Bank has only the first. It has no commitment to keep employment up.

The FOMC has considerable control over short-term interest rates. We have much less influence over long-term rates, which are set in the marketplace.

There's no hidden secrets going on in the Federal Reserve...

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

After a long period in which the desired direction for inflation was always downward, the industrialized world's central banks must today try to avoid major changes in the inflation rate in either direction.

If Congress wanted to intervene with the Federal Reserve, well, we created the Federal Reserve. We could uncreate it. But would you want Congress regulating the money supply? We'd have drowned in inflation, or gone bankrupt, decades ago.

There is a European Central Bank, of course, established and it has the structure similar to the Federal Reserve system, not precisely the same but similar.

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.

The Fed's ability to raise and lower short-term interest rates is its primary control over the economy.

The president has very little effect on the economy. If you want to put blame or credit, the main person who influences the business cycle is the head of the Federal Reserve Bank.

If you have a traditional view of economics, you're probably thinking of Ben Bernanke making Fed policy, or the guys creating financial derivatives at Goldman Sachs.

We made a decision that monetary policy will be made by an independent European Central Bank.

Of course I've already taken a very modest position on the monetary system, I do take the position that we should just end the Fed.

There's nothing the people love more than a Federal Reserve joke.

The Fed has the ability to put money out, it's got the ability to take money back in, and if they don't do that, we will have hyperinflation worse than we had in 1980 and 1981.

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?

Spending time at the Federal Reserve was a good learning opportunity for me. It helped me to understand economic philosophies and polices that I had not previously known about.