The bottom line for housing is that the concerns we used to hear about the possibility of a devastating collapse—one that might be big enough to cause a recession in the U.S. economy—while not fully allayed have diminished. Moreover, while the future for housing activity remains uncertain, I think there is a reasonable chance that housing is in the process of stabilizing, which would mean that it would put a considerably smaller drag on the economy going forward.

The lower half of households by wealth held just 3% of wealth in 1989 and only 1% in 2013.

In the long run, outsourcing is another form of trade that benefits the U.S. economy by giving us cheaper ways to do things.

Are deviations from full employment a social problem? Obviously.

To me, a wise and humane policy is occasionally to let inflation rise even when inflation is running above target.

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.

It slightly worries me that when people find a problem, they rush to judgment of what to do.