Ben Bernanke Quotes

If you believe in free markets, why do we have to have the Federal Reserve set interest rates?

Paying interest on reserve balances enables the Fed to break the strong link between the quantity of reserves and the level of the federal funds rate and, in turn, allows the Federal Reserve to control short-term interest rates when reserves are plentiful.

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

The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That's the question to be worried about.

To minimize market uncertainty and achieve the maximum effect of its policies, the Federal Reserve is committed to providing the public as much information as possible about the uses of its balance sheet, plans regarding future uses of its balance sheet, and the criteria on which the relevant decisions are based.

There will not be an automatic increase in interest rate when unemployment hits 6.5%.

It's sort of like a teeter-totter; when interest rates go down, prices go up.

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.

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.

The business community won’t like it if the Federal Reserve raises the interest rate. They never do. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it.

The history of interest rates is really the history of inflation. When inflation is high, interest rates are high, and when inflation is low, interest rates are low.

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

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.

I would be uncomfortable raising the federal funds rate if readings on wage growth, core consumer prices, and other indicators of underlying inflation pressures were to weaken, if market-based measures of inflation compensation were to fall appreciably further, or if survey-based measures were to begin to decline noticeably.

Monetary policy is like juggling six balls... it is not 'interest rate up, interest rate down.' There is the exchange rate, there are long term yields, there are short term yields, there is credit growth.

My priority is my economy minister mandate and to create momentum.

It's appropriate for the Fed to gradually and cautiously increase our overnight interest rate over time.

We need national economic policies that have been shown to work at the state level.

The FOMC has considerable control over short-term interest rates. We have much less influence over long-term rates, which are set in the marketplace.

As the dollar's exchange value declines, so will the value of dollar-denominated financial instruments, regardless of how many bonds the Federal Reserve purchases.

All economic forecasts are subject to considerable uncertainty. There is always a wide range of plausible outcomes for important economic variables, including the federal funds rate.

When they so-called 'target the interest rate', what they're doing is controlling the money supply via the interest rate. The interest rate is only an intermediary instrument.

The one instrument that has relative political autonomy is monetary policy. Central banks do not need to go to Congress to get approval for an interest rate hike.

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

I believe any decline would lock in a Fed increase with some certainty.