Quotes By Ben Bernanke

If I am confirmed, I am confident that my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee and I will maintain the focus on long-term price stability as monetary policy's greatest contribution to general economic prosperity and maximum employment.

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

I am very proud of my nerd-dom.

Well, optimism's a good thing. It - makes people go out and - you know, start businesses and spend and do whatever is necessary to get the economy going.

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

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

How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?

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.

In fact, the world needs more nerds.

The crisis and recession have led to very low interest rates, it is true, but these events have also destroyed jobs, hamstrung economic growth and led to sharp declines in the values of many homes and businesses.

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.

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

A gold standard doesn't imply stability in the prices of the goods and services that people buy every day, it implies a stability in the price of gold itself.

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.

I served seven years as the chair of the Princeton economics department where I had responsibility for major policy decisions, such as whether to serve bagels or doughnuts at the department coffee hour.

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

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.

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.

The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.

Importantly, in the 1930s, in the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, despite its mandate, was quite passive and, as a result, financial crisis became very severe, lasted essentially from 1929 to 1933.

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

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.

The Federal Reserve can only buy Treasuries and agencies, and moreover quantitative easing typically involves buying longer-term Treasuries and agencies in terms of bills, for example.

I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences... essential to that institution's ability to function effectively and achieve its mandated objectives.

In the future, my communications with the public and with the markets will be entirely through regular and formal channels.

I think one of the lessons of the Depression - and this is something that Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated - was that when orthodoxy fails, then you need to try new things. And he was very willing to try unorthodox approaches when the orthodox approach had shown that it was not adequate.

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.

The Fed is totally open.

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.

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.