Quotes About Ben Bernanke

#1. The Fed is the biggest enemy of this economy. In fact, Ben Bernanke, as far as I'm concerned, he's public enemy No. 1. We're never going to have a recovery while this guy's in charge.

Peter Schiff

#2. Even when [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke said the recession was over ... you think that would have been a bigger boom somewhere, but it seems we just take everything in stride.

Bill Maher

#3. 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.

Emily Oster

#4. There are no atheists in foxholes or ideologues in a financial crisis. Ben Bernanke

Andrew Ross Sorkin

#5. Smart financial planning - such as budgeting, saving for emergencies, and preparing for retirement - can help households enjoy better lives while weathering financial shocks. Financial education can play a key role in getting to these outcomes.

Ben Bernanke

#6. Economics is a highly sophisticated field of thought that is superb at explaining to policymakers precisely why the choices they made in the past were wrong. About the future, not so much.

Ben Bernanke

#7. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank.

Ben Bernanke

#8. We should see better and more direct measurements of economic well being.

Ben Bernanke

#9. Developments in financial markets can have broad economic effects felt by many outside the markets.

Ben Bernanke

#10. Evolving technologies that allow economists to gather new types of data and to manipulate millions of data points are just one factor among several that are likely to transform the field in coming years.

Ben Bernanke

#11. The more important reason is that the research itself provides an important long-run perspective on the issues that we face on a day-to-day basis.

Ben Bernanke

#12. Given the extent of the exposures of major banks around the world to A.I.G., and in light of the extreme fragility of the system, there was a significant risk that A.I.G.'s failure could have sparked a global banking panic.

Ben Bernanke

#13. I have spoken about deficits, and I think deficits are important because they address broad economic and financial stability. We need to talk about that.

Ben Bernanke

#14. The American people are among the most productive in the world. We have the best technologies. We have great universities. We have entrepreneurs.

Ben Bernanke

#15. No one will lend at a negative interest rate; potential creditors will simply choose to hold cash, which pays zero nominal interest.

Ben Bernanke

#16. Every effort needs to be made to try and offset the costs of Katrina and Rita by reductions in other government programs, especially those that are wasteful, duplicative and ineffective.

Ben Bernanke

#17. I don't fully understand movements in the gold price

Ben Bernanke

#18. A collapse in U.S. stock prices certainly would cause a lot of white knuckles on Wall Street.

Ben Bernanke

#19. Neighborhoods and communities are complex organisms that will be resilient only if they are healthy along a number of interrelated dimensions, much as a human body cannot be healthy without adequate air, water, rest, and food.

Ben Bernanke

#20. The Libor system is structurally flawed. It is a major problem for our financial system and for the confidence in the financial system. We need to address it.

Ben Bernanke

#21. Certainly, 9 percent unemployment and very slow growth is not a good situation.

Ben Bernanke

#22. Our mission, as set forth by the Congress is a critical one: to preserve price stability, to foster maximum sustainable growth in output and employment, and to promote a stable and efficient financial system that serves all Americans well and fairly.

Ben Bernanke

#23. Chairman Greenspan is, of course, a master.

Ben Bernanke

#24. Only a strong economy can create higher asset values and sustainably good returns for savers.

Ben Bernanke

#25. No economy can succeed without a high-quality workforce, particularly in an age of globalization and technical change.

Ben Bernanke

#26. The people who best use their advantages, or overcome adversity, and work honestly are those most worthy of admiration.

Ben Bernanke

#27. The financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007 was an extraordinarily complex event with multiple causes.

Ben Bernanke

#28. 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.

Ben Bernanke

#29. For practitioners of community development, as in any field, joining a network of like-minded professionals is important for building skills and becoming aware of opportunities and resources.

Ben Bernanke

#30. Monetary policy has less room to maneuver when interest rates are close to zero, while expansionary fiscal policy is likely both more effective and less costly in terms of increased debt burden when interest rates are pinned at low levels.

Ben Bernanke

#31. The Federal Reserve has always recognized the importance of allowing markets to work, and government oversight of financial firms will never be fully effective without the aid of strong market discipline.

Ben Bernanke

#32. I am confident that we will meet whatever challenges the future may bring.

Ben Bernanke

#33. In the typical economic recovery, a resurgent housing sector helps fuel reemployment and rising incomes.

Ben Bernanke

#34. If you take a candy bar in the short run, it gives you a burst of energy, but after a while, it just makes you fat.

Ben Bernanke

#35. Well, the U.S., of course, is the world's largest economy. It's about a quarter of the world's output. It's also home to many of the largest financial institutions and financial markets.

Ben Bernanke

#36. 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

#37. Different countries have different kinds of financial structures.

Ben Bernanke

#38. The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.

Ben Bernanke

#39. I was a professor at Princeton University. And, in that capacity, I studied for many years the role of financial crisis in the economy.

Ben Bernanke

#40. The children of the unemployed achieve less in school and appear to have reduced long-term earnings prospects.

Ben Bernanke

#41. I would argue that no financial instrument counted as regulatory capital should be allowed to receive any protection from losses.

Ben Bernanke

#42. Economic management involves the operation of economic frameworks in real time - for example, in the private sector, the management of complex financial institutions or, in the public sector, the day-to-day supervision of those institutions.

Ben Bernanke

#43. High levels of homeownership have been shown to foster greater involvement in school and civic organizations, higher graduation rates, and greater neighborhood stability.

Ben Bernanke

#44. Banks will have to win the confidence of their customers through fair dealing, making good loans, and remaining financially healthy.

Ben Bernanke

#45. The economic repercussions of a stock market crash depend less on the severity of the crash itself than on the response of economic policymakers, particularly central bankers.

Ben Bernanke

#46. Under a cold turkey strategy, at each policy meeting the Federal Open Market Committee would make its best guess about where it ultimately wants the funds rate to be and would move to that rate in a single step.

Ben Bernanke

#47. China is growing very quickly and is clearly becoming an important player in the world economy.

Ben Bernanke

#48. The failure of Lehman Brothers demonstrated that liquidity provision by the Federal Reserve would not be sufficient to stop the crisis; substantial fiscal resources were necessary.

Ben Bernanke

#49. If Australia finds it has a strong Australian dollar, and it has higher unemployment, then it would have to respond, and that would either be by increasing domestic demand or by weakening its own currency.

Ben Bernanke

#50. Because financially capable consumers ultimately contribute to a stable economic and financial system as well as improve their own financial situations, it's clear that the Federal Reserve has a significant stake in financial education.

Ben Bernanke

#51. 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.

Ben Bernanke

#52. It's the price of success: people start to think you're omnipotent.

Ben Bernanke

#53. Uncertainty is seen to retard investment independently of considerations of risk or expected return.

Ben Bernanke

#54. One would be forgiven for concluding that the assumed benefits of financial innovation are not all they were cracked up to be.

Ben Bernanke

#55. History has demonstrated time and again the inherent resilience and recuperative powers of the American economy.

Ben Bernanke

#56. 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

#57. If you are asking me if I would advocate that the Chinese go to greater flexibility in their exchange rate, I certainly would.

Ben Bernanke

#58. With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.

Ben Bernanke

#59. As an educator myself, I understand the profound effect that good teachers and a quality education have on the lives of our young people.

Ben Bernanke

#60. The sources of deflation are not a mystery. Deflation is in almost all cases a side effect of a collapse of aggregate demand.. a drop in spending so severe that producers must cut prices on an ongoing basis in order to find buyers.

Ben Bernanke

#61. The Federal Reserve has the capacity to operate in domestic money markets to maintain interest rates at a level consistent with our economic goals

Ben Bernanke

#62. You want to put the fire out first and then worry about the fire code.

Ben Bernanke

#63. To the extent that bank panics interfere with normal flows of credit, they may affect the performance of the real economy.

Ben Bernanke

#64. The ultimate purpose of economics, of course, is to understand and promote the enhancement of well-being.

Ben Bernanke

#65. In many spheres of human endeavor, from science to business to education to economic policy, good decisions depend on good measurement.

Ben Bernanke

#66. The Federal Reserve has never suffered any losses in the course of its normal lending to banks and, now, to primary dealers.

Ben Bernanke

#67. Consumers going through foreclosure typically will see their credit scores drop, raising longer-term questions about their ability to rebound financially and perhaps pursue a more sustainable home purchase at some later point.

Ben Bernanke

#68. [Virtual Currencies] may hold long-term promise, particularly if the innovations Promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system.

Ben Bernanke

#69. Banks need to continue to lend to creditworthy borrowers to earn a profit and remain strong.

Ben Bernanke

#70. If current trends continue, the typical U.S. worker will be considerably more productive several decades from now. Thus, one might argue that letting future generations bear the burden of population aging is appropriate, as they will likely be richer than we are even taking that burden into account.

Ben Bernanke

#71. When the economic well-being of their nation demanded a strong and creative response, my colleagues at the Federal Reserve ... mustered the moral courage to do what was necessary.

Ben Bernanke

#72. Rents should begin to decelerate as the demand for owner-occupied housing stabilizes and the supply of rental units increases.

Ben Bernanke

#73. The Fed's independence is critical.

Ben Bernanke

#74. The biggest downside of my current job is that I have to wear a suit to work. Wearing uncomfortable clothes on purpose is an example of what former Princeton hockey player and Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence taught economists to call 'signaling.'

Ben Bernanke

#75. There are limits to monetary policy.

Ben Bernanke

#76. It takes about two and a half percent growth just to keep unemployment stable.

Ben Bernanke

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

Ben Bernanke

#78. The movement toward a holistic approach to community development has been long in the making, but the housing crisis has motivated further progress.

Ben Bernanke

#79. I come from Main Street, from a small town that's really depressed.

Ben Bernanke

#80. If you're in a car crash, you're mostly involved in trying to not go off the bridge, and later on you say, 'Oh my God!'

Ben Bernanke

#81. The downturn following the collapse of Japan's so-called bubble economy of the 1980s was not as severe as the Great Depression.

Ben Bernanke

#82. It is not the responsibility of the Federal Bank - nor would it be appropriate - to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their decisions

Ben Bernanke

#83. Market discipline can only limit moral hazard to the extent that debt and equity holders believe that, in the event of distress, they will bear costs.

Ben Bernanke

#84. Imperfect substitutability of assets implies that changes in the supplies of various assets available to private investors may affect the prices and yields of those assets.

Ben Bernanke

#85. Small businesses have played an important role in fueling past economic recoveries.

Ben Bernanke

#86. The amount of currency in circulation is not changing. The money supply is not changing in any significant way.

Ben Bernanke

#87. In fact, the world needs more nerds.

Ben Bernanke

#88. Of course, economic forecasts must be revised when new information arrives and are thus necessarily provisional.

Ben Bernanke

#89. A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman's famous 'helicopter drop' of money.

Ben Bernanke

#90. Monetary policy is a blunt tool which certainly affects the distribution of income and wealth, although whether the net effect is to increase or reduce inequality is not clear.

Ben Bernanke

#91. Although low inflation is generally good, inflation that is too low can pose risks to the economy - especially when the economy is struggling.

Ben Bernanke

#92. To achieve a more balanced international system over time, countries with excessive and unsustainable trade surpluses will need to allow their exchange rates to better reflect market fundamentals.

Ben Bernanke

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

Ben Bernanke

#94. Because a person has to be either working or looking for work to be counted as part of the labor force, an increase in the number of people too discouraged to continue their search for work would reduce the unemployment rate, all else being equal - but not for a positive reason.

Ben Bernanke

#95. I've never been on Wall Street. And I care about Wall Street for one reason and one reason only because what happens on Wall Street matters to Main Street.

Ben Bernanke

#96. The public in many countries is understandably concerned by the commitment of substantial government resources to aid the financial industry when other industries receive little or no assistance. This disparate treatment, unappealing as it is, appears unavoidable.

Ben Bernanke

#97. Monetary policy cannot do much about long-run growth, all we can try to do is to try to smooth out periods where the economy is depressed because of lack of demand.

Ben Bernanke

#98. While rising delinquencies and foreclosures will continue to weigh heavily on the housing market this year, it will not cripple the U.S.

Ben Bernanke

#99. The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.

Ben Bernanke

#100. Our financial system is so complicated and so interactive - so many different markets in different countries and so many sets of rules.

Ben Bernanke