When people begin anticipating inflation, it doesn’t do you any good anymore, because any benefit of inflation comes from the fact that you do better than you thought you were going to do.

It’s a whole different attitude toward public service than it once was. I tell you, we can all sit around in our old age and moan about it, but I think the administrative processes and the management effectiveness of the federal government are terrible!

Double-digit inflation is a terrible thing – and it got up to 14 or 15 percent on a monthly basis for a while, shortly after I became chairman of the Fed.

I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth – one shred of evidence.

A nation’s exchange rate is the single most important price in its economy; it will influence the entire range of individual prices, imports and exports, and even the level of economic activity. So it is hard for any government to ignore large swings in its exchange rate...

What’s the subject of life – to get rich? All of those fellows out there getting rich could be dancing around the real subject of life...

It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. [I]f the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with 'free banking.' The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.

The only thing useful banks have invented in 20 years is the ATM.

The idea that when people see prices falling they will stop buying those cheaper goods or cheaper food does not make much sense. And aiming for 2 percent inflation every year means that after a decade prices are more than 25 percent higher and the price level doubles every generation. That is not price stability, yet they call it price stability. I just do not understand central banks wanting a little inflation.

The standard of living of the average American has to decline.