Quotes About Analysis

I found myself becoming increasingly interested in the policy frameworks that central banks use, and in how those frameworks might be improved.

Inflation prospects posed some tricky issues.

setting aside the most volatile prices leads to better predictions of overall inflation.

The unemployment rate, after its encouraging drop early in the year, would stagnate near 9 percent into the fall

Economists are criticized for not being able to predict the future,

Soon it might make sense to leave rates where they were for a meeting or two while we assessed the economy's prospects.

A few economists weighed in against our decision as well.

The decision would depend on economic developments, especially on the persistence of inflation.

The timing alone argues against that hypothesis.

They flattened out in 2006 but did not decline much initially

I recommended that we hold off in spite of market expectations for a reduction.

the course of the economy is extremely hard to forecast.

In my own thinking, I tended to emphasize developments in broader economic indicators—the forest rather than the trees—but I appreciated that the chairman's approach could sometimes yield interesting insights that more standard analyses might miss.

meeting by summarizing key financial developments

in part because financial crises are (fortunately) rare enough that relevant data are scarce.

Greenspan had come to the same conclusion.

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.

markets didn't have enough examples of Fed behavior in similar circumstances.

it is similar to the central bank balance sheets of other major industrial countries.

investors did not see the results as credible,

As Sherlock Holmes once observed: When you've excluded the inevitable, whatever remains, however unpalatable, must be lunch.

Question the motives of your professors. Pay attention to how they twist the facts, or editorialize during lecture. Ask them questions. Make them defend themselves. Make other students think before they buy into the professorial mindset.

In fact, the Latin root of the word literacy is the same as for the word intellect: leggere, "to read." The source for the word intellectual also gives us its true meaning: inter-leggere, "to read between." An intellectual is defined by an ability to read between the lines, to analyze and to think critically, to understand things on many levels at the same time.

And besides, I hate the vanity of a mind which thinks it excuses what it explains, I hate the conceit which is concerned only with itself while narrating the evil it has done, which tries to arouse pity by self-description and which, appearing indestructible among the ruins, analyses itself when it should be repenting. I hate that weakness which is always blaming others for its own impotence and which cannot see that the trouble is not in its surroundings but in itself.