Ben Bernanke Quotes

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

The Fed [Federal Reserve] is the world’s largest hedge fund.

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

It's true that the Federal Reserve faces a lot of political pressure and is unpopular in many circles.

There is always the potential for a central bank to engage in discretionary monetary policy and to break the one-to-one link between changes in foreign reserves and changes in the money supply.

The Fed is the greatest hedge fund in history.

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.

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

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.

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.

I don’t think that the Fed [Federal Reserve] ever can be or should be a prisoner of the markets.

In 2006, the Congress had approved plans to allow the Fed, beginning in 2011, to pay interest on banks' reserve balances. In the fall of 2008, the Congress moved up the effective date of this authority to October 2008.

I believe that the history of Fed policymaking is that, you know, there are times when we need to raise rates.

The monetary policy committee could either keep rates constant, increase them, or bring them down. There are three options possible compared to when it is accommodative.

There is no entity in the world that controls our lives more than the Federal Reserve System

The Fed has one power that is unique to it alone: it enables the creation of money out of thin air. Sometimes it makes vast new amounts. Sometimes it makes lesser amounts. The money takes a variety of forms and enters the system in various ways. And the Fed does this through techniques such as open-market operations, changing reserve ratios, and manipulating interest rates, operations that all result in money creation.

I think the role of the Federal Reserve is enormously exaggerated.

The reason inflation was brought down to manageable levels, by the time of Ronald Reagan's re-election, was directly attributable to Jimmy Carter's very courageous act, hiring a Federal Reserve chair, with the charge to induce a recession. That recession was probably the reason he didn't win a second term.

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

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.

Monetary policy itself cannot sensibly be directed at reducing imbalances.

We believe that the Federal Reserve has to carry on with a progressive increase in interest rates as a consequence of the American economy.

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

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

Monetary policy and fiscal policy are inseparable.