Top 88 Janet Yellen Quotes

As a general principle, the American people would be well served by the active pursuit of effective policies to support longer-run growth in productivity.

There were a lot of manufacturing jobs lost over a long period of time and particularly after – during the Great Recession. We’ve had some recovery in manufacturing employment as the economy’s recovered.

My advice would be, as you consider fiscal policies, to keep in mind and look carefully at the impact those policies are likely to have on the economy’s productive capacity, on productivity growth, and to the maximum extent possible, choose policies that would improve that long-run growth and productivity outlook.

Strapped by tight credit and plummeting sales, businesses have overhauled the way they manage supply chains, inventory, production practices and staffing.

There is always some chance of recession in any year. But the evidence suggests that expansions don’t die of old age.

It’s appropriate for the Fed to gradually and cautiously increase our overnight interest rate over time.

I am strongly committed to pursuing the dual goals that Congress has assigned us: maximum employment and price stability.

It’s pretty rare to just talk to people who are having a tough time in the economy, to hear their individual stories.

Yankee Stadium is a natural venue for another lesson: You won’t succeed all the time. Even Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio failed most of time when they stepped to the plate. Finding the right path in life, more often than not, involves some missteps.

When you hire a nanny, the question you ask yourself is, ‘What’s best for my precious child?’ And do you really want someone who feels that your motive in life is to minimize the amount you spend on your child?

If there is a job that you feel passionate about, do what you can to pursue that job; if there is a purpose about which you are passionate, dedicate yourself to that purpose.

Efforts to promote financial stability through adjustments in interest rates would increase the volatility of inflation and employment. As a result, I believe a macro-prudential approach to supervision and regulation needs to play the primary role.

I studied piano for seven years and play for my own enjoyment.

The Federal Reserve’s monetary policy objective is to foster maximum employment and price stability. In this regard, a key challenge is to assess just how far the economy now stands from the attainment of its maximum employment goal.

A clear lesson of history is that a ‘sine qua non’ for sustained economic recovery following a financial crisis is a thoroughgoing repair of the financial system.

I will be the first to say that it is always difficult to get monetary policy just right. But the Fed’s analytical prowess is top-notch, and our forecasting record is second to none.

People stop buying things, and that is how you turn a slowdown into a recession.

The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me.

Our ability to predict how the federal funds rate will evolve over time is quite limited because monetary policy will need to respond to whatever disturbances may buffet the economy.

Although we work through financial markets, our goal is to help Main Street, not Wall Street.

I continue to think many of the factors holding down inflation are transitory… We want to be careful not to jump to a premature conclusion about what’s in store for the U.S. economy.

In the five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment in the United States since the Great Depression.

Expanded credit access has helped households maintain living standards when suffering job loss, illness, or other unexpected contingencies.

The trust institutions have in the marketplace, the confidence customers and suppliers and workers and employees have, are very important to a business’s effectiveness.

In the long run, outsourcing is another form of trade that benefits the U.S. economy by giving us cheaper ways to do things.

Social safety-net spending is an important form of public funding that helps offset disparities in family resources for children.

Although most Americans apparently loathe inflation, Yale economists have argued that a little inflation may be necessary to grease the wheels of the labor market and enable efficiency-enhancing changes in relative pay to occur without requiring nominal wage cuts by workers.

We need to increase the transparency of shadow banking markets so that authorities can monitor for signs of excessive leverage and unstable maturity transformation outside regulated banks.

I felt that the Fed had always been the agency that picked up the pieces when there was a financial crisis, and it was invented to do exactly that.

The financial sector is vital to the economy. A well-functioning financial sector promotes job creation, innovation, and inclusive economic growth.

It’s important for market participants to have a sense of how we think about the economy and the appropriate path of policy, to look at incoming data, and to form their own judgments as to whether or not changes in policy would be appropriate.

At the federal level, the fiscal stimulus of 2008 and 2009 supported economic output, but the effects of that stimulus faded; by 2011, federal fiscal policy actions became a drag on output growth when the recovery was still weak.

Uncertainty about sales impedes business planning and could harm capital formation just as much as uncertainty about inflation can create uncertainty about relative prices and harm business planning.

I’m just opposed to a pure inflation-only mandate in which the only thing a central bank cares about is inflation and not employment.

The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it’s easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities.

Nationally, the share of mortgages that are underwater fell by about one-half between 2011 and 2014.

While admirers of capitalism, we also to a certain extent believe it has limitations that require government intervention in markets to make them work.

The Federal Reserve ranks among the most transparent central banks. We publish a summary of our balance sheet every week. Our financial statements are audited annually by an outside auditor and made public. Every security we hold is listed on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

If we were to raise interest rates too steeply, and we were to trigger a downturn or contribute to a downturn, we have limited scope for responding, and it is an important reason for caution.

Models used to describe and predict inflation commonly distinguish between changes in food and energy prices – which enter into total inflation – and movements in the prices of other goods and services – that is, core inflation.

I don’t feel that I’ve faced discrimination. I’ve had every chance to succeed and more, and I think that’s what all women should have.

Policies to strengthen education and training, to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, and to promote capital investment, both public and private, could all potentially be of great benefit in improving future living standards in our nation.

Access to capital is important for all firms, but it’s particularly vital for startups and young firms, which often lack a sufficient stream of earnings to increase employment and internally finance capital spending.

In effect, there has been a significant shortfall in the overall amount of monetary policy stimulus since early 2009.

One common way of judging whether housing’s price is in line with its fundamental value is to consider the ratio of housing prices to rents. This is analogous to the ratio of prices to dividends for stocks.

An increase in shareholder value can arise for reasons other than greater efficiency, such as increased power and the resulting ability to increase profits by raising prices.

Some degree of inequality in income and wealth, of course, would occur even with completely equal opportunity because variations in effort, skill, and luck will produce variations in outcomes.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is committed to policies that promote maximum employment and price stability, consistent with our mandate from Congress.

It’s important for the Fed, hard as it is, to attempt to detect asset bubbles while they’re forming.

In 2006, the Congress had approved plans to allow the Fed, beginning in 2011, to pay interest on banks’ reserve balances. In the fall of 2008, the Congress moved up the effective date of this authority to October 2008.

Audit the Fed is a bill that would politicize monetary policy, would bring short-term political pressures to bear on the Fed. In terms of openness about our financial accounts, we are extensively audited.

We will watch very carefully what is happening in the economy and adjust policies appropriate.

As always, it would be important to ensure that any fiscal policy changes did not compromise long-run fiscal sustainability.

My bottom line is that monetary policy should react to rising prices for houses or other assets only insofar as they affect the central bank’s goal variables – output, employment, and inflation.