45 Quotes by Lyle Gramley

whoever they pick has a considerable degree of background and expertise on monetary policy.

We still face a longer-range deficit problem and that will be exacerbated by increases in Medicare and Social Security payments, ... It would be helpful to bring our budget deficit down longer-term. I worry more about that than this temporary increase in the deficit.

This time, we're starting with an inflation rate that's too low and heading lower, ... What that means is the Fed will sit still until such time as it sees inflation start turning up -- which might not happen until late 2004 or early 2005.

There are a lot of worries circulating around about deflation, ... What the Fed is doing is saying we don't need to worry. If deflation happens, they will counter aggressively, and they have the tools to do so.

Financial markets are going to become uneasy about this because Alan Greenspan has become an oracle,

What the Fed is trying to do, by being more transparent and more communicative, is highly desirable. But there are going to slips along the way. Ben will learn and the markets will learn.

Crisis management has been elevated to a very fine skill under his tutelage.

Anyone who sits at that table knows that if the Fed puts his head up in the midst of an election campaign when it's not necessary to do so, that would be a rather foolish thing to do. You don't want people shooting at you unnecessarily - you'd rather live to fight another day.

The bottom line is that their principal concern is that inflation might go lower, so we'll get the same kind of statement we got last time.