Alan Blinder Quotes (18 Quotes)


    Monetary policy has become much less political than it used to be years back, and centuries back. There's a consensus on what monetary policy should be doing, which is to say keeping inflation low and, subject to that constraint, keeping employment high. So politicians take this attitude that it's for technocrats, and it doesn't matter too much whether the guy is a Republican or a Democrat.

    He was confident in his judgment, and he was right. The lesson is that sometimes you can't wait for the data to be definitive.

    It's not a lack of transparency when you stop giving information when there is nothing to give, and we're getting pretty close to that point.

    We will soon learn whether the Greenspan era has created a deep reservoir of faith in the Federal Reserve, or just in Alan Greenspan.

    What this illustrates is the virtue of being more plain-spoken and the dangers when you are not.


    The current episode is vastly worse than that there's only been the slightest bit of a paltry recovery in the labor market.

    And the maestro surely wielded the chairman's baton with extraordinary skill. His stellar record suggests that the only right answer to the age-old question of whether it is better to be lucky or good may be both.

    We all remember the 'jobless recovery' of the 1990s -- that experience was, for the labor market, significantly worse than any in post-World War II history,

    I think they're right on the curve but in danger of being behind the curve.

    While Alan Greenspan may have enjoyed more than his share of good luck during his storied tenure as Fed chairman, he was also confronted with a wide variety of challenges that required subtlety, a deft touch and good judgment.

    Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond to it.

    There is a kind of a cascading chain, ... If one can't sell, then that business doesn't buy and that means the next business doesn't sell, and the previous business doesn't sell, and so on.

    Never treat only one productivity number that seriously, ... What you have to remember is that productivity has always been very cyclical. When the economy sags, productivity sags.

    One of the reasons for all the happy faces in retail this holiday shopping season is that gas prices are going down, down, down. Employment and income are doing well.

    In the classic old business cycle, there would be a diminution in sales it would take a little while for this information to reach corporate headquarters, ... And there would be an inventory pileup. And then - bam - businesses would react, sometimes violently, by cutting production.

    His performance as chairman of the Fed has been impressive, encompassing, and overwhelmingly beneficial - to the nation, to the institution, and to the practice of monetary policy,

    The Fed is watching with every eye, ear, and nose it has for evidence that oil prices are creeping into core inflation.

    The Fed really tried to throw some cold water on those who are saying the recession's over already, ... The optimists are declaring it over already ... I think there's a good chance they're wrong, and the Fed obviously is predicating policy on the basis that they are wrong.


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