Ben Bernanke Quotes

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 main long-run contribution monetary policy can make is to provide a stable macroeconomic and financial environment.

Japan's experience suggests the importance of assessing the sustainability of price stability over a fairly long period, which many central banks have emphasized in recent years.

Low and stable inflation in many countries is an important accomplishment that will continue to bring significant benefits.

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

And I am convinced that a single focus on preserving the purchasing power of the dollar, in effect, guarding against inflation or deflation, actually creates a solid foundation for the greatest job growth and the strongest economy that America can have.

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 Federal Reserve's monetary policy objective is to foster maximum employment and price stability. In this regard, a key challenge is to assess just how far the economy now stands from the attainment of its maximum employment goal.

I believe that being in a position, as a central bank, to influence economic growth does not mean losing independence.

The best way that a central bank can support growth on a durable basis is to ensure inflation is low, stable - there is financial stability - and that is the role that the central bank plays.

The Congress has tasked the Federal Reserve with achieving stable prices and maximum employment - the dual mandate.

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.

The benefit of appointing a hawkish central banker is the increased inflation-fighting credibility that such an appointment brings.

Achieving price stability is not only important in itself, it is also central to attaining the Federal Reserve's other mandate objectives of maximum sustainable employment and moderate long-term interest rates.

The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it's easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities.

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.

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 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.

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.

I have said repeatedly that the way to sustainable growth is to bring down inflation to much more reasonable levels.

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.

Avoiding inflation is not an absolute imperative but rather is one of a number of conflicting goals that we must pursue and that we may often have to compromise.

During the Greenspan-Bernanke era, the Fed has embraced the view that stability in the economy and stability in prices are mutually consistent. As long as inflation remains at or below its target level, the Fed's modus operandi is to panic at the sight of real or perceived economic trouble and provide emergency relief.