Alice Rivlin Quotes

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.

The Fed's policy choices can always be debated, but the quality and commitment of the Federal Reserve as a public institution is second to none, and I am proud to lead it.

There's no other job in public life that is like chairman of the Fed.

I was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. As you know, there are twelve banks and they have their citizens board, and I got elected to the Fed Chairmanship for the Federal Reserve Kansas City Bank back in the mid-'90s. It might have been 1995-'96.

Our focus is on ensuring America has the strongest economy in the world for the next 100 years and to do that, we need to get to the role of the Federal Reserve and we need to get it right.

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

The Federal Reserve Board is indefensible in theory and indispensable in practice.

The very existence the Federal Reserve System is a safeguard against anything like a calamity growing out of money rates …. We have the power to deal with such an emergency instantly by flooding the street with money.

The Federal Reserve places great importance on our relations with the Bundesbank. Few such relationships have been as important, over the decades, in promoting financial stability and prosperity around the world.

This is very intriguing to think we should audit the Fed, but I discovered that probably if they audited the Fed, it would get a clean bill because it's undoubtedly doing exactly what it's supposed to do according to the law.

The Federal Reserve is incapable of accomplishing its stated objectives.

When I did my research on this topic, I came to the startling conclusion that the Federal Reserve System does not need to be audited - it needs to be abolished.

In the past, Federal Reserve chairmen have not generally gone directly to the public.

This bill, the Sound Dollar Act, is all about looking forward about the role the Fed should play.

You can't fall back on the private sector and say, 'You take care of the nation's banking system.' That's a fundamental function of the government, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC, etc. All of those agencies have a major role to play there.

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.

The job of the Central Bank is to worry.

The Federal Reserve Act requires the Federal Reserve to report annually on its operations and to publish its balance sheet weekly.

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.

So just as I want pilots on the planes that I fly, when it comes to monetary policy, I want to think that there is someone with sound judgement at the controls.

Interest rates are used to achieve overall economic stability.

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.

If somebody had said to me in June or July of 1987, 'We'd like you to become chairman of the Federal Reserve, but you're never allowed to discuss any economics after you leave,' I'd have said, 'Forget it.' What do they want me to do? Become an anthropologist?'

The Federal Reserve's job is to do the right thing, to take the long-run interest of the economy to heart, and that sometimes means being unpopular. But we have to do the right thing.

Fostering transparency and accountability at the Federal Reserve was one of my principal objectives when I became Chairman in February 2006.