Janet Yellen

Public Servant

1946-08-13

Quotes by Janet Yellen

• By putting downward pressure on interest rates, the Fed is trying to make financial conditions more accommodative - supporting asset values and lower borrowing costs for households and businesses and thus encouraging the spending that spurs job creation and a stronger recovery.

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• Starting in late 2007, faced with acute financial market distress, the Federal Reserve created programs to keep credit flowing to households and businesses. The loans extended under those programs helped stabilize the financial system.

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• During the 1970s, inflation expectations rose markedly because the Federal Reserve allowed actual inflation to ratchet up persistently in response to economic disruptions - a development that made it more difficult to stabilize both inflation and employment.

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• When I was very young, my father had an accident. He fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his skull, and lost sight in one eye.

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• 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.

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• U.S. economic activity continues to expand, led by solid growth in household spending. But business investment remains soft, and subdued foreign demand and the appreciation of the dollar since mid-2014 continue to restrain exports.

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• 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.

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• We have put in place policies through supervision and regulation that has greatly enhanced the safety and soundness of the banking system.

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• 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.

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• In 1977, when I started my first job at the Federal Reserve Board as a staff economist in the Division of International Finance, it was an article of faith in central banking that secrecy about monetary policy decisions was the best policy: Central banks, as a rule, did not discuss these decisions, let alone their future policy intentions.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Monetary policy will, as always, respond to the economy's twists and turns so as to promote, as best as we can in an uncertain economic environment, the employment and inflation goals.

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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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

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• A wide range of possible fiscal policy tools and approaches could enhance the cyclical stability of the economy. For example, steps could be taken to increase the effectiveness of the automatic stabilizers, and some economists have proposed that greater fiscal support could be usefully provided to state and local governments during recessions.

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• Inequality has risen to the point that it seems to me worthwhile for the U.S. to seriously consider taking the risk of making our economy more rewarding for more of the people.

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