The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.

Nobody really understands gold prices and I don't pretend to understand them either.

A collapse in U.S. stock prices certainly would cause a lot of white knuckles on Wall Street. But what effect would it have on the broader U.S. economy? If Wall Street crashes, does Main Street follow? Not necessarily.

Both humanity's capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history.

I and others were mistaken early on in saying that the subprime crisis would be contained. The causal relationship between the housing problem and the broad financial system was very complex and difficult to predict.

The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short term political concerns.

The more guidance a central bank can provide the public about how policy is likely to evolve the greater the chance that market participants will make appropriate inferences.