In the five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment in the United States since the Great Depression.

The trust institutions have in the marketplace, the confidence customers and suppliers and workers and employees have, are very important to a business's effectiveness.

Maturity transformation is a central part of the economic function of banks and many other types of financial intermediaries.

It's extremely important for our banks to have more capital, higher quality capital.

Models used to describe and predict inflation commonly distinguish between changes in food and energy prices - which enter into total inflation - and movements in the prices of other goods and services - that is, core inflation.

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.

We have put in place policies through supervision and regulation that has greatly enhanced the safety and soundness of the banking system.

I studied piano for seven years and play for my own enjoyment.

It's important for the Fed, hard as it is, to attempt to detect asset bubbles while they're forming.

It's pretty rare to just talk to people who are having a tough time in the economy, to hear their individual stories.

I would be uncomfortable raising the federal funds rate if readings on wage growth, core consumer prices, and other indicators of underlying inflation pressures were to weaken, if market-based measures of inflation compensation were to fall appreciably further, or if survey-based measures were to begin to decline noticeably.

My parents were born in 1906 and 1907. I think the experience of the Depression greatly influenced the way they thought about the world.

The pace of increases in labor compensation provides another possible indicator, albeit an imperfect one, of the degree of labor market slack.

New policy tools, which helped the Federal Reserve respond to the financial crisis and Great Recession, are likely to remain useful in dealing with future downturns.

For decades, the pace of technological change in manufacturing has outstripped that in the economy as a whole. And, so, firms - manufacturing firms - have found it easier to continue producing by - with - reducing their workforces.

It's appropriate for the Fed to gradually and cautiously increase our overnight interest rate over time.

It is hard to have great confidence in predicting what market reactions to Fed decisions will be.

In effect, there has been a significant shortfall in the overall amount of monetary policy stimulus since early 2009.

As always, it would be important to ensure that any fiscal policy changes did not compromise long-run fiscal sustainability.

Our ability to predict how the federal funds rate will evolve over time is quite limited because monetary policy will need to respond to whatever disturbances may buffet the economy.

Firms don't just try to pay as little as possible to get the needed bodies on board; when there is unemployment, they ask themselves how wage cuts would affect the behavior of the employees. Would they quit or feel dissatisfied and work less hard on the firm's behalf if they feel that wage policies are unfair?

Sometimes you have to make decisions without knowing all that you would like to know That's part of the job.

It certainly would be helpful going forward for deficit reduction efforts to focus on the medium term while not subtracting from the impetus we need to keep a fragile economy moving forward.

An important factor influencing intergenerational mobility and trends in inequality over time is economic opportunity.