Central Bank Quotes

#1. 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.

Noam Chomsky

#2. In a mature economy like India's, which is becoming modern and a financially-oriented economy, an independent central bank, responsible central bank, is really central to success.

Ben Bernanke

#3. In the U.A.E. we were the least-regulated environment in the region, and over time we are seeing more and more regulation coming in. On the other hand, a central bank can overregulate and choke the economy, and then we will have a dead banking industry.

Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair

#4. What's brilliant about the United States system of government is separation of power. Not only the executive, legislative, judicial branches, but also the independence of the military from civilians, an independent media and press, an independent central bank.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

#5. Let's not forget, it was the government, Department of Finance and Central Bank that decided to unfairly land the taxpayers of this country with unmitigated losses of Anglo and massive legacy issues that would have been expected when nationalising a fraudulent bank.

Sean Quinn

#6. The Congress has had an uneasy relationship with banks and bankers since Alexander Hamilton. It took the United States until 1913 to set up a central bank. The Federal Reserve earned its hard-won independence over years of effort.

Robert Zoellick

#7. Repeal the entire Banking Act of 1933, and Austrian School economists will cheer, especially if the current system were replaced by a 100%-reserve competitive banking with no central bank. That banking reform would give us a sound money system, meaning no more business cycle, bailouts, or inflation.

Llewellyn Rockwell

#8. History proves ... that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse.

Ben Bernanke

#9. The more guidance a central bank can provide the public about how policy is likely to evolve the greater the chance that market participants will make appropriate inferences.

Ben Bernanke

#10. The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short term political concerns.

Ben Bernanke

#11. The job of the Central Bank is to worry.

Alice Rivlin

#12. The case against a fully independent central bank is strong indeed.

Milton Friedman

#13. We made a decision that monetary policy will be made by an independent European Central Bank.

Gerhard Schroder

#14. Any central bank should only be in charge of liquidity. Solvency is a matter for the treasury.

George Soros

#15. 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.

Toshihiko Fukui

#16. Unless we have a Central Bank with adequate control of credit resources, this country is going to undergo the most severe and far reaching money panic in its history.

Jacob Schiff

#17. In fact, some leaders come right out and say it. Mario Draghi the president of the European Central Bank had an interview with the Wall St Journal in which he said the social contract's dead; we finally got rid of it.

Noam Chomsky

#18. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.

Ron Paul

#19. 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.

Janet Yellen

#20. The establishment of a central bank is 90% of communizing a nation.

Vladimir Lenin

#21. A private central bank issuing the public currency is a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army. We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.

Thomas Jefferson

#22. 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.

Janet Yellen

#23. There are five main purposes of central bank cooperation" ... "the provision of international credits and joint efforts to influence asset prices (especially gold and foreign exchange) in circumstances where this might be thought useful.

William Smith White

#24. The Federal Reserve the privately owned U.S. central bank definitely caused The Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one third from 1929 to 1933.

Milton Friedman

#25. 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.

Janet Yellen

#26. By creating the European Central Bank, the member states exposed their own government bonds to the risk of default. Developed countries that issue bonds in their own currency never default, because they can always print money. Their currency may depreciate, but the risk of default is absent.

George Soros

#27. I don't think I've been too optimistic. The government believes the contraction will be around 1.5 per cent, as the central bank said. However, we're waiting to see the Commission estimate.

Luis De Guindos

#28. There is a European Central Bank, of course, established and it has the structure similar to the Federal Reserve system, not precisely the same but similar.

Robert C. Solomon

#29. At the most basic level, a central bank must be clear and open about its actions and operations, particularly when they involve the deployment of public funds.

Ben Bernanke

#30. There was a real fear that a euro-zone bank might fail, that we'd have a sovereign debt problem in one of the larger European economies. That's dissipated, thanks largely to the action of the European Central Bank.

George Osborne

#31. Currency peg can mean higher volatility in short-term interest rates, as the central bank seeks to keep the price of its money steady in terms of the peg. It can mean deflation, if the supply of the peg is constrained (as the supply of gold was relative to the demand for it in the 1870s and 1880s).

Niall Ferguson

#32. A government cannot be expected to allow independence to its central bank unless that bank is also accountable to it and to the wider public. That is, the central bank must be able to be judged on whether or not it has achieved its agreed objective.

Ian Macfarlane

#33. Among other objectives, liquidity guidelines must take into account the risks that inadequate liquidity planning by major financial firms pose for the broader financial system, and they must ensure that these firms do not become excessively reliant on liquidity support from the central bank.

Ben Bernanke

#34. The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.

Andrew Jackson

#35. Most of the policies that support robust economic growth in the long run are outside the province of the central bank.

Ben Bernanke

#36. In the current situation, particular attention should be given to the quality of financial and economic management. The Government and the Central Bank should have a strategic action plan

Tatyana Golikova

#37. Quantitative easing is just the latest chapter in the Federal Reserve's hundred-year history of failure. ( ... ) The American people have suffered long enough under a monetary policy controlled by an unaccountable, secretive central bank. It is time to finally audit - and then end - the Fed.

Ron Paul

#38. It is always and everywhere the province of the central bank to monetize any spending, the government's or the private sector's, by printing enough money to pay for it in depreciated dollars.

Caroline Baum

#39. The Japanese experience, when a conscious effort by the central bank to prick an asset bubble ended up triggering an 80 per cent stock market sell-off and a decade of economic stagnation.

Niall Ferguson

#40. 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.

Steve Hanke

#41. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. It is made by or stopped by the central bank.

Milton Friedman

#42. My bottom line is that monetary policy should react to rising prices for houses or other assets only insofar as they affect the central bank's goal variables - output, employment, and inflation.

Janet Yellen

#43. Banks are concerned the central bank is imposing too many regulations. If the trend continues, we'll swing to heavy regulation. We need to have balanced regulation to encourage the economy.

Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair

#44. A Central Bank official said that Q-coin did not affect the renminbi; it adds vibrancy to the economy.

Ma Huateng

#45. The Federal Reserve ranks among the most transparent central banks. We publish a summary of our balance sheet every week. Our financial statements are audited annually by an outside auditor and made public. Every security we hold is listed on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Janet Yellen

#46. Monetary policy does not work like a scalpel but more like a sledgehammer.

Liaquat Ahamed

#47. It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.

Ron Paul

#48. War has generally had grave and fateful consequences for the American monetary and financial system. We have seen that the Revolutionary War occasioned a mass of depreciated fiat paper, worthless Continentals, a huge public debt, and the beginnings of central banking in the Bank of North America.

Murray Rothbard