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Business cycles lengthened greatly during the 20th century, as central banks learned to manage national economies by raising and lowering interest rates. -- Alex Berenson
Political risk is hard to manage because so much comes down to the personal choices of policymakers, whether prime ministers or heads of central banks. -- James Surowiecki
Japan's experience suggests the importance of assessing the sustainability of price stability over a fairly long period, which many central banks have emphasized in recent years. -- Toshihiko Fukui
Banks hold deposits and savings entrusted to them by individuals, by businesses, by governments and by central banks. They put that money to work, helping people to buy homes, for example, or lending to businesses to invest in expansion. -- Bob Diamond
Insanity has infected all the central banks of the world. -- David Stockman
It is clear to me that the financial sector, including CNBC, loves central banks -- Marc Faber
The Federal Reserve, like other central banks, wields powerful tools; democratic accountability requires that the public be able to see how and for what purposes those tools are being used. -- Ben Bernanke
Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise. -- Alan Greenspan
The central banks cannot control interest rates. That's a mistake. They can control a particular rate, such as the Federal Funds rate, if they want to, but they can't control interest rates. -- Milton Friedman
After a long period in which the desired direction for inflation was always downward, the industrialized world's central banks must today try to avoid major changes in the inflation rate in either direction. -- Ben Bernanke
In 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed, we anticipated that Europe was going to have a very different bailout scheme than the U.S. because of their different political systems and different relationships between the central banks and the fiscal authorities. -- Lou Jiwei
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Each central banksought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world. -- Carroll Quigley
In the economy of the cuckoo people that populate central banks, everything is possible. What you have is gigantic bubbles, the NASDAQ in 2000, then the housing bubble and then commodities in 2008 when oil went from $78 to $147 before plunging to $32 within six months. -- Marc Faber
Welcome to the age of paper money, where governments and central banks can manufacture as much money as they want without limit. Gold was the last limit. Its banishment as a standard unleashed the inflation monster and leviathan itself, which has swelled beyond comprehension. -- Llewellyn Rockwell
The actions taken by central banks and other authorities to stabilize a panic in the short run can work against stability in the long run if investors and firms infer from those actions that they will never bear the full consequences of excessive risk-taking. -- Ben Bernanke
The world's central banks and the International Monetary Fund still have vaults full of bullion, even though currencies are no longer backed by gold. Governments hold on to it as a kind of magic symbol, a way of reassuring people that their money is real. -- James Surowiecki
The world changes! So we're in a situation today where the only policymakers that have flexibility are central banks. But they don't have the instruments! So they've had to experiment, and the more you experiment, the more uncertainty and the higher the risk of collateral damage. -- Mohamed El-Erian
There is a well-established conviction that the central banks always do what is necessary to keep the system going and then afterwards you then take care of the legal aspects. In a crisis, you simply do not have time to think about such concerns for too long. -- George Soros
As you know, in the latter part of 2008 and early 2009, the Federal Reserve took extraordinary steps to provide liquidity and support credit market functioning, including the establishment of a number of emergency lending facilities and the creation or extension of currency swap agreements with 14 central banks around the world. -- Ben Bernanke
[When] the market is trying to get to terms with, first, lower global growth, particularly out of emerging markets and China. And, second, the market is worried the central banks have run out of ammunition. So put these two things together, and then investors are repricing the market lower. -- Mohamed El-Erian
The Federal Reserve ranks among the most transparent central banks. We publish a summary of our balance sheet every week. Our financial statements are audited annually by an outside auditor and made public. Every security we hold is listed on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. -- Janet Yellen
My monetary studies have led me to the conclusion that central banks could profitably be replaced by computers. Fortunately, for me personally, that conclusion has had no practical impact, else there would have been no Central Bank of Sweden to have established the award [Nobel Prize] I am honored to receive. -- Milton Friedman
I am pretty sure central banks will continue to print money, and the standards of living for people in the western world, not just in America, will continue to decline because the cost of living increases will exceed income. The cost of living will also go up because all kinds of taxes will increase. -- Marc Faber
In the old days we were the challenger brand competing against the big banks, but today I go round the world and I sit with governors of central banks and finance ministers and, in some cases, prime ministers. They all know Travelex. We are regarded as the establishment - the world's largest retailer of foreign currency. -- Lloyd Dorfman
The goal of the FED, as with all central banks, is three-fold: (1) to protect the largest commercial banks from their depositors, who occasionally exercise their contractual right to withdraw currency (the ungrateful cads); (2) to control entry of newcomers into the bankers' cartel (interlopers); (3) to keep the stock market from collapsing in a panic, thereby persuading depositors to withdraw currency -- Gary North
The job of the Central Bank is to worry. -- Alice Rivlin
The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short term political concerns. -- Ben Bernanke
We made a decision that monetary policy will be made by an independent European Central Bank. -- Gerhard Schroder
A Central Bank official said that Q-coin did not affect the renminbi; it adds vibrancy to the economy. -- Ma Huateng
Most of the policies that support robust economic growth in the long run are outside the province of the central bank. -- Ben Bernanke
I'm just opposed to a pure inflation-only mandate in which the only thing a central bank cares about is inflation and not employment. -- Janet Yellen
In a mature economy like India's, which is becoming modern and a financially-oriented economy, an independent central bank, responsible central bank, is really central to success. -- Ben Bernanke
There is a European Central Bank, of course, established and it has the structure similar to the Federal Reserve system, not precisely the same but similar. -- Robert C. Solomon
At the most basic level, a central bank must be clear and open about its actions and operations, particularly when they involve the deployment of public funds. -- Ben Bernanke
The more guidance a central bank can provide the public about how policy is likely to evolve the greater the chance that market participants will make appropriate inferences. -- Ben Bernanke
Banks are concerned the central bank is imposing too many regulations. If the trend continues, we'll swing to heavy regulation. We need to have balanced regulation to encourage the economy. -- Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair
A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. -- Ron Paul
There was a real fear that a euro-zone bank might fail, that we'd have a sovereign debt problem in one of the larger European economies. That's dissipated, thanks largely to the action of the European Central Bank. -- George Osborne
The Congress has had an uneasy relationship with banks and bankers since Alexander Hamilton. It took the United States until 1913 to set up a central bank. The Federal Reserve earned its hard-won independence over years of effort. -- Robert Zoellick
The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it's easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities. -- Janet Yellen
The Central Bank should have a permanent window for discounting high quality securities where banks could go and discount these. It gives peace of mind to the banks. In the absence of this facility, what banks tend to do is to keep a liquidity cushion for emergency requirements. This is a very expensive way of managing liquidity. -- Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair
The one instrument that has relative political autonomy is monetary policy. Central banks do not need to go to Congress to get approval for an interest rate hike. -- Mohamed El-Erian
Central banks don't have divine wisdom. They try to do the best analysis they can and must be prepared to stand or fall by the quality of that analysis. -- Mary Kay Ash
Central banks need to be able to buy bonds if there are short-term malfunctions of the markets. But buying bonds without differentiation and without limits would be very problematic. -- Lars Feld
The lack of monetary discipline has become a hallmark of unfettered globalization. Central banks have failed to provide a stable underpinning to world financial markets and to an increasingly asset-dependent global economy. -- Stephen S. Roach

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