“You can’t have a regime which continuously subsidizes things; as inflation rises, you keep prices of certain things unchanged.”
“The central focus of what we are doing at the Fed is to keep inflation from accelerating – and preferably decelerating.”
“Entitlements seem to grow with prosperity; not only because they are indexed to inflation or GDP, but also because a prosperous country tells itself it can afford more benefits.”
“The role of monetary policy is to smooth out business cycles by promoting steady inflation and healthy labor markets, but modern central bankers have taken an activist turn.”
“The higher interest and higher inflation is a vicious cycle.”
“Near-zero policy rates that may be considerably expansionary in an economy with high inflation could be contractionary when inflation is too close to zero, or worse, deflation has set in.”
“To be sure, faster growth in nominal labor compensation does not necessarily portend higher inflation.”
“Since World War II, inflation – the apparently inexorable rise in the prices of goods and services – has been the bane of central bankers.”
“Slow growth and inflation have a tendency to accompany large deficits and increasing debt as a percentage of GDP.”
“It’s a challenge for monetary policy to communicate that our inflation objective is 2 percent.”
“If we were to underrun our inflation objective over a period of time that we tried to increase interest rates, I think that would be worrisome.”
“Production is the only answer to inflation.”
“Prisoners have benefited disproportionately from ‘rights inflation’ – the expansion of human rights into unforeseen nooks and crannies.”
“There is no such thing as a riskless hedge against inflation.”
“It was gradually learned that acceptance of a somewhat higher inflation rate would not really bring somewhat higher employment.”
“Inflation in Russia is primarily related to internal factors.”
“No one thinks of controlling inflation of a continental-sized country by holding back municipal tariffs. Macroeconomic stability cannot be achieved through microeconomic intervention.”
“I’m against using Petrobras to combat inflation.”
“They flooded liquidity in the marketplace but the mortgage rate is based much more on expectations of inflation. So if the average investor believes that there is inflation coming, they’ll move that rate up.”
“Right now the long-term investors are telling us that they’re not as concerned about inflation and so we’re seeing these rates now move into the marketplace and out to the street – rates that individuals can get.”
“If I were in charge of the government, I would index the minimum wage to inflation, so that way, everybody knows what they can count on.”
“I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.”
“Monetary policy should remain data dependent, be well communicated, and ensure that inflation expectations remain anchored.”
“In reality, while currency movements can have a significant impact on inflation in other countries, dollar movements have rarely had a meaningful or durable impact on prices in the U.S.”
“If people expect high inflation and raise wages to reflect the high inflation, then it becomes self-fulfilling.”
“There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation.”
“The real problem is deflation. That is the opposite of inflation but equally serious to the borrower.”
“Taxes on capital, taxes on labor, inflation, bureaucratic regulation, minimum wage laws, are all – to different degrees – unnecessary slices of the wedge that stand between an individual’s effort and reward for that effort.”
“Businesses that have gone through an episode of hyperinflation become understandably alert to the threat of it: at the first hint of inflation, they’re likely to increase prices, since they’ve learned that if they don’t, and inflation hits, their businesses will be wrecked.”
“After adjusting for inflation, the average income of the top 5% of households grew by 38% from 1989 to 2013. By comparison, the average real income of the other 95% of households grew less than 10%.”
“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.”
“Although most Americans apparently loathe inflation, Yale economists have argued that a little inflation may be necessary to grease the wheels of the labor market and enable efficiency-enhancing changes in relative pay to occur without requiring nominal wage cuts by workers.”
“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.”
“My bottom line is that monetary policy should react to rising prices for houses or other assets only insofar as they affect the central bank’s goal variables – output, employment, and inflation.”
“Food and energy account for a significant portion of household budgets, so the Federal Reserve’s inflation objective is defined in terms of the overall change in consumer prices.”
“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.”
“Below-target inflation increases the real value of debts owed by households and businesses and reduces the ability of central banks to respond to downturns.”
“The only way to ensure that inflation expectations remain safely anchored near the FOMC’s target is to keep inflation close to that target on a consistent basis.”
“This unchecked spending is growing faster than our economy, faster than inflation, and far beyond our means to sustain it.”
“Historically, gold has always been a safe haven against inflation and a safe haven in times of political instability.”
“Well, I think the global economy is in the position for continuing good growth with inflation well in check.”
“We have to keep our eye on inflation, but so far inflation remains reasonably in check on the global stage.”
“Americans have seen the value of the dollar slowly decline due to the steady erosion of inflation.”
“Inflation destroys savings, impedes planning, and discourages investment. That means less productivity and a lower standard of living.”
“In reality there is no such thing as an inflation of prices, relatively to gold. There is such a thing as a depreciated paper currency.”
“Each money-printing exercise brings about unintended consequences. These unintended consequences are higher inflation rates than had no money been printed.”
“It’s not about the pace, it’s about the direction we’ve set. The pace is of course a function of many factors, including the magnitude of the supply shock. But what’s probably more important is the probability of the supply shock translating into sustainable embedded inflation.”
“Domestic inflation reflects domestic monetary policy.”
“Inflation is lower and more stable and the real business cycle fluctuations are more modest.”
“Thirty years ago, many economists argued that inflation was a kind of minor inconvenience and that the cost of reducing inflation was too high a price to pay. No one would make those arguments today.”
“Pay in the acting world hasn’t kept up with inflation.”
“In essence, the stock market represents three separate categories of business.They are, adjusted for inflation, those with shrinking intrinsic value, those with approximately stable intrinsic value, and those with steadily growing intrinsic value.”
“Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.”
“Inflation is taxation without legislation.”
“The underconsumptionist of 1819 believed that consumption would be stimulated by tariffs, while the underconsumptionist of a later day urged monetary expansion as the remedy. On the other hand, the remedy proposed for the shortage of money capital was monetary inflation in 1819, encouragement of savings and thrift in the 1930s.”
“If the universe sprung into existence and then expanded exponentially, you get gravitational waves traveling through space-time. These would fill the universe, a pattern of echoes of the inflation itself.”
“When runaway inflation and bank failures struck in Germany in the 1920s, the middle class was destroyed, which led directly to the rise of the Nazis.”
“It was the biggest inflation and the most sustained inflation that the United States had ever had.”
“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.”
“Under Reagan’s policies, inflation and nominal GNP growth shriveled much faster than predicted, throwing off government revenue estimates and resulting in budget deficits.”
“Avoiding inflation is not an absolute imperative but rather is one of a number of conflicting goals that we must pursue and that we may often have to compromise.”
“There is no such thing as agflation. Rising commodity prices, or increases in any prices, do not cause inflation. Inflation is what causes prices to rise. Of course, in market economies, prices for individual goods and services rise and fall based on changes in supply and demand, but it is only through inflation that prices rise in aggregate.”
“There are two main drivers of asset class returns – inflation and growth.”
“When growth is slower-than-expected, stocks go down. When inflation is higher-than-expected, bonds go down. When inflation is lower-than-expected, bonds go up.”
“The benefits of freer trade, such as job creation, lower inflation, and greater consumer choice, are often invisible or only partly visible.”
“The issue is, you’re not going to have a lot of inflation showing up when you have no velocity.”
“Health-care costs when I got into the industry in ’88 were 16 percent a year inflation. When I got out in 1997, they were less than 1 percent.”
“In the simplest terms, inflation occurs when there’s too much money in the system. On the flip side, deflation occurs when there are too few dollars in circulation.”
“Deflation isn’t good, and inflation is easier to cure than deflation.”
“Inflation is the crabgrass in your savings.”
“Median wages of production workers, who comprise 80 percent of the workforce, haven’t risen in 30 years, adjusted for inflation.”
“If the world’s using bitcoin, governments won’t be able to fund wars through inflation like they do today.”
“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”
“Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation.”
“’Eternal inflation,’ as it’s called – the endless generation of new universes – may be a hyper-cosmic imperative. It seems that it must happen.”
“We asked the workers to give up 25 percent of their salaries. Imagine! We asked the industrialists to freeze all costs, no matter what the inflation is.”
“Many emerging countries are facing the same issue of overheating and inflation because they have been vigorously expanding fiscal and monetary policy to counter the 2008 shock.”
“The Planck satellite may detect the imprint of the gravitational waves predicted by inflation. This would be quantum gravity written across the sky.”
“The best measure of inflation is what is happening with commodity prices.”
“Until the Fed dumps inflation targeting and the U.S. abandons its weak-dollar policy, inflation will rule the day.”
“The power to regulate the value of money does not involve a power to dilute the value of money by inflation, an absurd and self-serving rendering.”
“Foreign trade clearly has been a reason why inflation has been low.”
“Republicans don’t seem to mind taking inflation into account when the subject is tax rates.”
“During the past two decades, inflation has fallen to a low level in major industrial countries.”
“A weaker currency is a national tariff. After we get a weaker currency, we have to take advantage of that. Or else, we will waste it once more in inflation and in the inability to raise competitiveness.”
“We have been mandated by the government, backed by legislation, that we have to have an inflation target of about 4%.”
“It is important to recognise near- and medium-term risks to the inflation outlook.”
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
“If we have wealth, it will be protected from inflation and possibly even enhanced in value.”
“Deficits do not in themselves produce inflation, nor does a balanced budget assure a stable price level.”
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