Courage to Act Quotes

“If we acted, nobody would thank us. But if we did not act, who would? Making politically unpopular decisions for the long-run benefit of the country is the reason the Fed exists as a politically independent central bank. It was created for precisely this purpose: to do what must be done—what others cannot or will not do.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“Barney Frank wanted to know where the Fed was going to get the $85 billion to lend to AIG. I didn’t think this was the time to explain the mechanics of creating bank reserves. I said, “We have $800 billion,” referring to the pre-crisis size of the Fed’s balance sheet. Barney looked stunned. He didn’t see why the Fed should have that kind of money at its disposal.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“Unlike my predecessor, I intended to use email. To avoid being deluged, I needed a pseudonym. Andy Jester, an IT specialist for the Board, suggested Edward Quince. He had noticed the word “Quince” on a software box and thought “Edward” had a nice ring. It seemed fine to me, so Edward Quince it was. The Board phone book listed him as a member of the security team. The pseudonym remained confidential while I was chairman. Whenever we released my emails—at congressional request or under the Freedom of Information Act, for example—we blacked out the name.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“They also reminded me of a story Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher included in one of his speeches about the early nineteenth-century French diplomat Talleyrand and his archrival, Prince Metternich of Austria. When Talleyrand died, Metternich was reported to have said, “I wonder what he meant by that?” It seemed that no matter what I said or how plainly I said it, the markets tried to divine some hidden meaning.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“Economists are criticized for not being able to predict the future, but, because the data are incomplete and subject to revision, we cannot even be sure what happened in the recent past. Noisy data make effective policymaking all the more difficult.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“I had become a Great Depression buff in the way that other people are Civil War buffs, reading not only about the economics of the period but about the politics, sociology, and history as well.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“You have a neighbor, who smokes in bed. . . . Suppose he sets fire to his house,” I would say later in an interview. “You might say to yourself . . . ‘I’m not gonna call the fire department. Let his house burn down. It’s fine with me.’ But then, of course, what if your house is made of wood? And it’s right next door to his house? What if the whole town is made of wood?”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“If you’ve got a squirt gun in your pocket, you may have to take it out. If you’ve got a bazooka, and people know you’ve got it, you may not have to take it out,” he said. Sometimes market fears can be self-fulfilling, and a strong demonstration can avoid the worst outcomes. I was reminded of the military doctrine of “overwhelming force” as the way to prompt quick surrender and minimize casualties.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“They believed that anyone who worked hard to feed his or her family, no matter how humble the work, deserved respect.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“The Fed's economic models, and economic forecasting models in general, do a poor job of incorporating the economic effects of financial instability, in part because financial crisis are (fortunately) rare enough that relevant data are scarce.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“When the Fed makes a loan, taking securities or bank loans as collateral, the recipient of the loan deposits the funds in a commercial bank. The bank in turn adds the funds to its reserve account at the Fed. When banks hold substantial reserves, they have little need to borrow from other banks, and so the interest rate that banks charge each other for short-term loans—the federal funds rate—tends to fall. But the FOMC targets that same short-term interest rate when making monetary policy. Without offsetting action, our emergency lending—by increasing the reserves that banks held at the Fed—would tend to push down the federal funds rate and other short-term interest rates. Since April, we had set our target for the federal funds rate at 2 percent—the right level, we thought, to balance our goals of supporting employment and keeping inflation under control. We needed to continue our emergency lending and at the same time prevent the federal funds rate from falling below 2 percent. Thus far, we had successfully resolved the potential inconsistency by selling a dollar’s worth of Treasury securities from our portfolio for each dollar of our emergency lending. The sales of Treasuries drained reserves from the banking system, offsetting the increase in reserves created by our lending. This procedure, known as sterilization, allowed us to make loans as needed while keeping short-term interest rates where we wanted them.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“On the demand side, tax cuts should lead to more consumer spending—although by how much depends on the form of the cuts and who receives them—”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“the economy performs best if the central bank has the latitude to make monetary policy decisions in pursuit of maximum employment and stable prices,”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“However, further limitations on emergency authorities, especially if combined with a rollback of the orderly liquidation authority itself, would leave the Fed and other agencies without essential tools to respond to the next crisis.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“Banks have spent hundreds of millions of dollars complying with the new rules and are not looking for a rollback.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“arguing that its benefits usually outweigh the costs imposed on businesses and consumers.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“on regulation he appears to be more aligned with traditional Republicans.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“It’s not obvious, therefore, what officially declaring China to be a manipulator would accomplish.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“the reality is that globalization and international economic integration are too far advanced to be undone, except at very great cost.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“The president has substantial unilateral authority in trade, so political opposition may not prevent him from carrying through on some of his promises.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“Congress opted for budget cuts and tax increases.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“Helping those hurt by change, and ensuring that its benefits are more widely shared, is the right thing to do;”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“when such improvements are not forthcoming, many people will be inclined to resist change if they can.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“(Politicians will have to do the heavy lifting here, because for the most part these are not issues that can be addressed by the Fed or monetary policy.)”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“Why did Trump’s message resonate?”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“Trump’s victory was not an isolated event but part of a worldwide trend toward populism.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“But there can be little doubt he identified and spoke to a deep sense of popular dissatisfaction.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“By many metrics, the economy has recovered from the financial crisis and the Great Recession. U.S.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that today we need more cooperation and less confrontation in Washington.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath

“These principles should be more broadly applied in Washington.”
― Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath