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.

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

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.

It was probably a mistake to allow gold to rise so high.

The speed of communication, the speed of information transfer, the cheapness of communication, the ease of moving things around the world are a difference in kind as well as degree.

Less emphasis on inventories, I think, may tend to dampen business cycles, because business cycles are typically in the grasp of inventory cycles and heavy industry cycles.

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