[Virtual Currencies] may hold long-term promise, particularly if the innovations Promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system.

Inflation is certainly low and stable and, measured in unemployment and labour-market slack, the economy has made a lot of progress. The pace of growth is disappointingly slow, mostly because productivity growth has been very slow, which is not really something amenable to monetary policy. It comes from changes in technology, changes in worker skills and a variety of other things, but not monetary policy, in particular.

September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.

If current trends continue, the typical U.S. worker will be considerably more productive several decades from now. Thus, one might argue that letting future generations bear the burden of population aging is appropriate, as they will likely be richer than we are even taking that burden into account.

In the future, my communications with the public and with the markets will be entirely through regular and formal channels.

How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?

Economics is a highly sophisticated field of thought that is superb at explaining to policymakers precisely why the choices they made in the past were wrong. About the future, not so much.