Ben Bernanke Bank Quotations

Congress had made clear that it has affirmed the principle of keeping banking and commerce separate. This loophole ... circumvents that principle. If Congress wants to revisit banking and commerce, that's their prerogative but it doesn't seem a good approach to allow a loophole in which that distinction breaks down.

If bankers become overly conservative in response to past lending mistakes - or if examiners force such behavior - it will hurt bankers' own long-term interests and the economy in general.

Among the largest banks, the capital ratios remain good and I don’t expect any serious problems . . . . among the large, internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system.

Investment banks manage to go bankrupt through their investment-banking activities, commercial banks manage to go bankrupt through their commercial-banking activities.

The benefit of appointing a hawkish central banker is the increased inflation-fighting credibility that such an appointment brings.

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.

After a long period in which the desired direction for inflation was always downward, the industrialized world's central banks must today try to avoid major changes in the inflation rate in either direction.

There are a number of institutions globally where the Federal Reserve typically leads the U.S. effort to work with financial regulators from other countries, and we try to, to the extent possible, establish international standards for how - the amount of capital a bank should hold, for example, or how much.

Banks need to continue to lend to creditworthy borrowers to earn a profit and remain strong.

The Federal Reserve has never suffered any losses in the course of its normal lending to banks and, now, to primary dealers.

History proves... that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse.

The actions taken by central banks and other authorities to stabilize a panic in the short run can work against stability in the long run if investors and firms infer from those actions that they will never bear the full consequences of excessive risk-taking.

Central bankers got it right in the United States in 1987 when they avoided deflationary pressures as well as serious trouble in the banking system.

Banks will have to win the confidence of their customers through fair dealing, making good loans, and remaining financially healthy.

Under constrained discretion, the central bank is free to do its best to stabilize output and employment in the face of short-run disturbances, with the appropriate caution born of our imperfect knowledge of the economy and of the effects of policy (this is the 'discretion' part of constrained discretion),

The Depression was an incredibly dramatic episode - an era of stock-market crashes, breadlines, bank runs and wild currency speculation, with the storm clouds of war gathering ominously in the background... For my money, few periods are so replete with human interest.

Community banks are generally doing quite well, and I expect that good performance to continue. Neither bankers nor their supervisors should become complacent.

Deflation can be particularly dangerous when a financial system is shaky, with household and corporate balance sheets in poor shape and banks undercapitalized and heavily burdened with bad loans.

Given the extent of the exposures of major banks around the world to A.I.G., and in light of the extreme fragility of the system, there was a significant risk that A.I.G.'s failure could have sparked a global banking panic.

As you know, in the latter part of 2008 and early 2009, the Federal Reserve took extraordinary steps to provide liquidity and support credit market functioning, including the establishment of a number of emergency lending facilities and the creation or extension of currency swap agreements with 14 central banks around the world.