Ben Bernanke Prices Quotations

Since World War II, inflation - the apparently inexorable rise in the prices of goods and services - has been the bane of central bankers.

I think it's generally a bad idea for the Fed to be the arbiter of asset prices. The Fed doesn't really have any better information than other people in the market about what the correct value of asset prices is.

Those high oil prices are a burden on U.S. families, on firms' production costs. But the good news is that at least so far the U.S. economy has not been slowed by the high energy prices.

Unfortunately there's nothing, really, that can be done that's going to affect energy prices or gasoline prices in the very short run.

When prices are stable, people can hold money for transactions and other purposes without having to worry that inflation will eat away at the real value of their money balances.

At this point, a leveling out or a modest softening of housing activity seems more likely than a sharp contraction, although significant uncertainty attends the outlook for home prices and construction.

Equally important, stable prices allow people to rely on the dollar as a measure of value when making long-term contracts, engaging in long-term planning or lending for long periods.

A collapse in U.S. stock prices certainly would cause a lot of white knuckles on Wall Street.

A further jump in energy prices or a more pronounced reaction to those increases in prices that have already occurred could test the strength of the expansion,

Imperfect substitutability of assets implies that changes in the supplies of various assets available to private investors may affect the prices and yields of those assets.

High energy prices are burdening household budgets and raising production costs, and continued increases would at some point restrain economic growth.

I do think there is some chance we will see increased private sector savings in the next year or two if housing prices were to moderate.

These inflation effects should fade even if energy prices remain elevated, so long as monetary policy keeps inflation expectations well-anchored.

The high energy prices are certainly burdening consumer budgets, they are burdening cost structures of firms and certainly continued increases in energy prices are a risk for economic growth going forward.

The inflation objective is explicitly a long-term or medium term objective. It focuses on, for example, core inflation to avoid getting involved in short-term fluctuations in energy prices and the like.