Athanasios Orphanides Quotes

The central focus of what we are doing at the Fed is to keep inflation from accelerating - and preferably decelerating.

Until the Fed dumps inflation targeting and the U.S. abandons its weak-dollar policy, inflation will rule the day.

The two important variables for the policy formulation are projected inflation and the output gap. There is no clear hidebound mathematics that we must give 'X' weight to inflation and 'Y' weight to growth and form the associated policy.

A crucial responsibility of any central bank is to control inflation, the average rate of increase in the prices of a broad group of goods and services.

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.

At the end of the day, inflation has been below 2% for quite a long time, and to me, symmetry means getting somewhere above 2% inflation at some point in my Fed career.

No one thinks of controlling inflation of a continental-sized country by holding back municipal tariffs. Macroeconomic stability cannot be achieved through microeconomic intervention.

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.

However, in spite of the general perception that monetary policy should be conducted so as to avert deflation, a central bank cannot lower interest rates below the zero lower bound.

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.

Deflation isn't good, and inflation is easier to cure than deflation.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is committed to policies that promote maximum employment and price stability, consistent with our mandate from Congress.

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 I am confirmed, I am confident that my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee and I will maintain the focus on long-term price stability as monetary policy's greatest contribution to general economic prosperity and maximum employment.

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?

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.

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.

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

Domestic inflation reflects domestic monetary policy.

I have never believed that central banks should have rigid inflation targeting. That is not a good thing to stabilize. There is nothing in economic theory to back this.

Our purpose is to lean against the winds of deflation or inflation, whichever way they are blowing.

Experience shows that high and unstable inflation can harm growth. A noninflationary macroeconomic policy is, therefore, a prerequisite for rapid development. Control of government borrowing is the crucial element in such a policy. When public borrowing is excessive, governments are soon obliged to finance it by printing money, and rising inflation then follows.

Whip Inflation Now

Once an economy reaches a certain level of acceleration... the Fed is no longer with you... The Fed, instead of trying to get the economy moving, reverts to acting like the central bankers they are and starts worrying about inflation and things getting too hot.

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