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.

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.

Are deviations from full employment a social problem? Obviously.

We do not interpret bitcoin's popularity as having a relationship with the public's view of the Federal Reserve's conduct of monetary policy

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

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

[A] major source of wealth for many families is financial assets, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and private pensions. ...the wealthiest 5 percent of households held nearly two-thirds of all such assets in 2013