Marriner Eccles Quotes

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?

The Federal Reserve bank buys government bonds without one penny

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

We have to remember there is not a big printing press in Washington that continually prints money over and over.

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.

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

Each money-printing exercise brings about unintended consequences. These unintended consequences are higher inflation rates than had no money been printed.

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.

It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

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.

If Federal Reserve loans are subsidies, it doesn't show up in the federal budget.

Monetary policy and fiscal policy are inseparable.

The Federal Reserve's job is to take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going.

If by carelessness in controlling inflation and imposing controls on our general economy we are unable to meet these temporary but vital calls upon us, we will be courting real disaster.

We should be humble about our ability to stimulate the economy with monetary policy.

The worst failures of the Federal Reserve have come from waiting too long tp tighten monetary policy during expansions, not from loosening it too much during recessions.

The Federal Reserve is playing a mind game—but with enormous real-world consequences.

The Federal Reserve system obviously doesn't work anymore - they keep lowering the federal discount rate, and all that happens is that the banks are making a fortune, and the old folks' CDs are getting chewed up.

Forget quantitative easing - I've always thought the idea of injecting virtual money into the system is an accident waiting to happen.

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

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 Fed is totally open.

All the Federal Reserve can do is make loans against collateral.

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.

In 1977, when I started my first job at the Federal Reserve Board as a staff economist in the Division of International Finance, it was an article of faith in central banking that secrecy about monetary policy decisions was the best policy: Central banks, as a rule, did not discuss these decisions, let alone their future policy intentions.