Quotes from Ben S. Bernanke

If defaults spread beyond Greece, the stability of Europe's entire banking system could be at risk.

Obama also urged streamlining overlapping regulatory agencies (without getting into specifics),

I was glad to see Obama bringing these issues,

In making the decisions we made in March 2008, we could not know all that would transpire.

policymakers had to weigh what might happen if Greece, after a default,

In any case, the funds rate, by itself, is relatively unimportant.

The principles in his speech seemed sensible and pragmatic to me.

When not consulting or traveling to speak at meetings and conferences, I work on various projects at the Brookings Institution

These longer-term rates are not under the Fed's direct control. Instead, they are set by participants in financial markets.

I also believe that critics overstate the contribution of moral hazard from the Bear intervention to the resurgence of the crisis in the fall.

also worried about possible spillover effects,

I took slight comfort from the fact that he hadn't said we had gone over the edge of our lawful power.

As always, I follow the economy closely. But it's liberating to read about policy debates knowing that someone else will have to make and defend the tough decisions.

sat to my left.

With little room to cut the funds rate further, how could we put downward pressure on longer-term rates?

The mistake increased Bear's shareholders' bargaining power.

How do you draw the line between a healthy, exciting economic boom and a wanton, speculative stock-market bubble driven by the less savory aspects of human nature? As I pointed out drily to the House Banking Committee, the question was all the more complicated because the two can coexist.

But before Congress had an opportunity to give serious consideration to these issues, Lehman had failed,

stimulating demand and pushing inflation up toward our target.

Greg—whom I had known since graduate school—called and asked if I had any interest in succeeding him.

The Bear Stearns rescue was followed by a period of relative calm, but we remained wary.

The goal of macroprudential regulation is to identify and defuse more broad-based risks that may not be evident when looking at individual institutions in isolation.

the consequences of not having a single fiscal authority for the eurozone became apparent.

The idea was watch what I do, not what I say.