Yellen Quotes

Ducks are practically defenseless, and as a result, they have many predators. There are foxes, coyotes, wolves, raccoons, bobcats, hawks, and Janet Yellen.

Reich would soon back a request from Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide’s white-haired, unnaturally tanned CEO. Mozilo wanted an exemption from the Section 23A rules that prevented Countrywide’s holding company from tapping the discount window through a savings institution it owned. Sheila and the FDIC were justifiably skeptical, as was Janet Yellen at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, in whose district Countrywide’s headquarters were located. Lending indirectly to Countrywide would be risky. It might well already be insolvent and unable to pay us back. The day after the discount rate cut, Don Kohn relayed word that Janet was recommending a swift rejection of Mozilo’s request for a 23A exemption. She believed, Don said, that Mozilo “is in denial about the prospects for his company and it needs to be sold.” Countrywide found its reprieve in the form of a confidence-boosting $2 billion equity investment from Bank of America on August 22—not quite the sale that Janet thought was needed, but the first step toward an eventual acquisition by Bank of America. Countrywide formally withdrew its request for a 23A exemption on Thursday August 30 as I was flying to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to speak at the Kansas City Fed’s annual economic symposium. The theme of the conference, chosen long before, was “Housing, Housing Finance, and Monetary Policy.

Remember, you can use banks for your convenience, not for theirs!

I am describing the outlook that I see as most likely, but based on many years of making economic projections, I can assure you that any specific projection I write down will turn out to be wrong, perhaps markedly so.” —JANET YELLEN

Janet Yellen wants to have inflation of at least 2%. Well, even at 2%, every ten years you lose 20% of the value of your money. How do you prevent that? Invest your money in equities to stay ahead of inflation, and hopefully above that you’ll get 5, 6, 7% growth.

For most people, “buy term insurance and invest the difference” ends up being “buy term and spend the difference.”   “Most people’s egos prefer THEIR facts to THE facts.” —Dan Kennedy, marketing guru and author

Life does have a tendency to throw us curveballs, and they have a perverse way of coming at the most inconvenient times.

When you have a cash cushion to fall back on, you can opt for higher deductibles (the amount you pay before the insurance kicks in) on your auto, homeowners, and other insurance policies. If you think of your insurance policies as safeguards against major catastrophes rather than something that covers smaller expenses, the savings can be huge.

A higher deductible will mean lower premiums in all kinds of insurance—but you definitely wouldn’t want a deductible that is higher than your liquid cash fund.

Janet Yellen, Fed chair, on Tuesday sent a frisson through the markets by telling Congress that some asset valuations looked stretched. She also warned that if the labour market continued to improve faster than the Fed had anticipated, then the first rises in rates would come earlier than now expected.

THE Federal Reserve is “the most transparent central bank to my knowledge in the world,” claims its chairwoman, Janet Yellen.

If we understand how a person’s body influences risk taking, we can learn how to better manage risk takers. We can also recognize that mistakes governments have made have contributed to excessive risk taking. Consider the most important risk manager of them all — the Federal Reserve. Over the past 20 years, the Fed has pioneered a new technique of influencing Wall Street. Where before the Fed shrouded its activities in secrecy, it now informs the street in as clear terms as possible of what it intends to do with short-term interest rates, and when. Janet L. Yellen, the chairwoman of the Fed, declared this new transparency, called forward guidance, a revolution; Ben S. Bernanke, her predecessor, claimed it reduced uncertainty and calmed the markets. But does it really calm the markets? Or has eliminating uncertainty in policy spread complacency among the financial community and actually helped inflate market bubbles?

Errors of human judgment can infect even the smartest people, thanks to overconfidence, lack of attention to details, and excessive trust in the judgments of others, stemming from a failure to understand that others are not making independent judgments, but are themselves following still others—the blind leading the blind. —ROBERT J. SHILLER, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, YALE UNIVERSITY

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. —VICTOR HUGO

It is not the beauty of the building you should look at. It’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time. —DAVID ALLAN COE, MUSICIAN

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

And as the saying goes, those who forget or are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.

The highest form of ignorance is to reject something you know nothing about.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.… We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Mark Twain described your friendly local banker eloquently many years ago: “A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

It’s what you learn after you know it all that really matters. —JOHN WOODEN, LEGENDARY BASKETBALL COACH

Carlson could have offered a counterpoint instead of a polemic; he could have encouraged a debate. Instead he chose to lie about Yellen’s words. That made for more impact, more rage, not informed discussion. It was paradoxical, because just a few moments later, Carlson claimed “they,” the people in charge, “don’t want a debate.” When he worked at Heritage, he said, the idea was that “just because the other side was rotten didn’t mean you could be rotten.” But he had stopped applying that principle many, many years—and many, many rotten words—ago.

I'll give you an actual example. Pamela Yellen, the CEO of the Prospecting & Marketing Institute, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I were conducting a multiday seminar for her clients — corporate executives and general agents from life insurance companies — about new methods of recruiting agents. Even though the attendees had paid a very high per-person fee to be there, most had traveled great distances, and the subject was of critical importance to them, we both noticed that on breaks, what most of them were talking about was where they were going to go play golf that evening when the seminar let out, the next morning before it started, or the day afterward. Both Pamela and I made note of how important it was to these clients of hers to get out on the golf course. This led to one of the most unusual ads Pamela has ever written and run in her own industry's trade journals, with the headline: “Puts Recruiting on Autopilot So You Can Go Play Golf!” The entire ad is reproduced on the following page, Exhibit #3. As you'll see, it sold the system we devised for insurance agent recruiting, but it did so circuitously, by emphasizing the hidden benefit: you'll get the job done with less time invested, so you can spend more time on the golf course.

Naked, ostentatious goodness without common sense was a vanity, a celebration of self, and a waste of precious feelings.