Quotes by Ben Bernanke

“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!'”

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

“Many foreclosed homes are neglected or abandoned, as legal proceedings or other factors delay their resale. Deteriorating or vacant properties can, in turn, directly affect the quality of life in a...”

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

“There’s no denying that a collapse in stock prices today would pose serious macroeconomic challenges for the United States. Consumer spending would slow, and the U.S. economy would become less of a...”

“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.”

“Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve System. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, w...”

“House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong eco...”

“To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spen...”

“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. However,...”

“It was a global depression, had many causes, the whole story requires you to look at the whole international system. But policy errors in United States, as well as abroad, did play an important rol...”

“I want to make sure you keep your eyes on the ball, that is, the two basic missions of a central bank. The first is maintaining macroeconomic stability: maintaining stable growth and keeping inflat...”

“We did stop the meltdown. We avoided what would have been, I think, a collapse of the global financial system. That was obviously a good thing. But one thing that I was always sure of and the Feder...”

“Obviously, based on the crisis and what happened and the effects that we're still feeling, it's now clear that maintaining financial stability is just as an important a responsibility as monetary a...”

“For nearly eight years, Ben has led the Fed through some of the most daunting economic challenges of our lifetime. . . . [W]hen faced with a potential global economic meltdown, he has displayed tre...”

“The stark truth about Ben Bernanke’s historic policy of global liquidity support was that it involved handing trillions of dollars in loans to that coterie of banks, their shareholders and their ou...”