We should see better and more direct measurements of economic well being.
Now that I'm a civilian again, I can once more comment on economic and financial issues without my words being put under the microscope by Fed watchers.
To minimize market uncertainty and achieve the maximum effect of its policies, the Federal Reserve is committed to providing the public as much information as possible about the uses of its balance sheet, plans regarding future uses of its balance sheet, and the criteria on which the relevant decisions are based.
After the 1929 crash, the Federal Reserve mistakenly focused its policies on preserving the gold value of the dollar rather than on stabilizing the domestic economy.
Monetary policy cannot do much about long-run growth, all we can try to do is to try to smooth out periods where the economy is depressed because of lack of demand.
Monetary policy is not a panacea.
There are limits to monetary policy.
Monetary policy is a blunt tool which certainly affects the distribution of income and wealth, although whether the net effect is to increase or reduce inequality is not clear.
When the economic well-being of their nation demanded a strong and creative response, my colleagues at the Federal Reserve... mustered the moral courage to do what was necessary.
In September 2008, the two largest housing mortgage companies called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were government-sponsored enterprises, which hold hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages, because of the losses they took on the mortgages, they essentially became insolvent, and the government had to take them over.
In fact, the world needs more nerds.
To be sure, faster growth in nominal labor compensation does not necessarily portend higher inflation.
If the fiscal cliff occurs, I don't think the Federal Reserve has the tools to offset that event.
It's the price of success: people start to think you're omnipotent.
The Federal Reserve has always recognized the importance of allowing markets to work, and government oversight of financial firms will never be fully effective without the aid of strong market discipline.
I served seven years as the chair of the Princeton economics department where I had responsibility for major policy decisions, such as whether to serve bagels or doughnuts at the department coffee hour.
In the tradition of national income accounting, economic policymakers have typically focused on variables such as income, wealth, and consumption.
Economic management involves the operation of economic frameworks in real time - for example, in the private sector, the management of complex financial institutions or, in the public sector, the day-to-day supervision of those institutions.
People saw the Depression as a necessary thing - a chance to squeeze out the excesses, get back to Puritan morality. That just made things worse.
Consumers going through foreclosure typically will see their credit scores drop, raising longer-term questions about their ability to rebound financially and perhaps pursue a more sustainable home purchase at some later point.