Quotes from Ben Bernanke

To be sure, faster growth in nominal labor compensation does not necessarily portend higher inflation.

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

The economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long run, we are all dead. If he were around today he might say that, in the long run, we are all on Social Security and Medicare.

The Federal Reserve cannot solve all the economy's problems on its own.

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.

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

Honest error in the face of complex and possibly intractable problems is a far more important source of bad results than are bad motives.

There are limits to monetary policy.

In September 2008, the two largest housing mortgage companies called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were government-sponsored enterprises, which hold hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages, because of the losses they took on the mortgages, they essentially became insolvent, and the government had to take them over.

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

If two people always agree, one of them is redundant.

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.

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

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.

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.

Preventing liquidation of an unbalanced market will leave you in tears.

Economic engineering is about the design and analysis of frameworks for achieving specific economic objectives.

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

Sector-specific price declines, uncomfortable as they may be for producers in that sector, are generally not a problem for the economy as a whole and do not constitute deflation.

If you want to understand geology, study earthquakes. If you want to understand the economy, study the Depression.

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

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

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

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.