In short, both experience and economic theory imply that the US could now t to a more competitive dollar without experiencing either increased inflation or decreased economic growth.

We are particularly poor at the open economy issues.

Even if the dollar does decline during the coming months, the delays in the response of exports and imports to the more competitive dollar will mean that the increase in aggregate demand from this source may not happen for a year or more.

Domestic inflation reflects domestic monetary policy.

We pay some price when necessary to bring down inflation but that price is temporary and is not large relative to the permanent gain from reduced inflation.

After all, an overvalued dollar gives us the ability to buy foreign goods at lower prices. And the existing volume of exports brings more yen and euros than they would if the dollar were more competitive.

But then in April of 1985 the dollar began a sharp decline. The dollar's trade weighted value fell 23 percent in just 12 months and by a total of 37 percent by the beginning of 1988.

I think that over the last few decades, we have seen better economic outcomes than in the past.

Although economists have studied the sensitivity of import and export volumes to changes in the exchange rate, there is still much uncertainty about just how much the dollar must change to bring about any given reduction in our trade deficit.

First, I think the science of monetary economics has clearly gotten better.

But the primary reason for wanting the dollar to become more competitive in the near future is that we may need an increase in exports this year and in 2007 to sustain the economy's current pace of expansion.

The more competitive value of the dollar turned around the trade deficit.

Increased government spending can provide a temporary stimulus to demand and output but in the longer run higher levels of government spending crowd out private investment or require higher taxes that weaken growth by reducing incentives to save, invest, innovate, and work.

A second reason why science cannot replace judgement is the behavior of financial markets.

But because we in the United States finance our current account deficit by borrowing in our own currency, we can move to a more competitive dollar without the adverse effects that followed currency declines in other countries.

The price of imported oil in the US doubled between summer 2003 and summer 2005, reducing consumers' purchasing power by more than 1 per cent of gross domestic product.

The good news is that a competitive dollar in the global market and a strong dollar at home are compatible in both the long run and during the transition to a more competitive dollar.

A rise in the level of saving can reduce aggregate activity temporarily but only a sustained high level of saving makes it possible to have the sustained high level of business investment that contributes to the long-run growth of output.

Homeowners who refinanced their mortgages took out cash and reduced their monthly payments at the same time. Much of the cash obtained by refinancing was spent on consumer durables, home improvements and the like.

And finally, no matter how good the science gets, there are problems that inevitably depend on judgement, on art, on a feel for financial markets.

An increase in the relative price of products from the low wage manufacturers in Asia and Latin America will also make those products less attractive to American consumers.

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.

To finance this trade deficit, the U.S. has to borrow from the rest of the world or sell American assets like stocks, businesses, and real estate to the rest of the world.

The only way that we can reduce our financial dependence on the inflow of funds from the rest of the world is to reduce our trade deficit.

Unless the trade deficit shrinks, the combination of the trade deficit and the interest and dividend payments to foreigners will grow ever more rapidly.

My theme this evening is that America needs a competitive dollar.

In short, both experience and economic theory imply that the US could now t to a more competitive dollar without experiencing either increased inflation or decreased economic growth.

So just as I want pilots on the planes that I fly, when it comes to monetary policy, I want to think that there is someone with sound judgement at the controls.

Inflation is lower and more stable and the real business cycle fluctuations are more modest.

If the Federal Reserve pursues a strong dollar at home while the dollar becomes more competitive in global markets, we can achieve both price stability and a more balanced path of economic growth.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past - whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering.

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty.

Well, the hardest thing to do, as we know from our own experience on 9/11 is protect everything all the time.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

When I reached adulthood, even now, I could afford to belong to a country club. But I could never belong to a private club because of my experience as a child, because it would isolate me from the whole of humanity.

No one I know of has ever had this experience-where you had to sit and wait and wait for a DNA test to come back just so you can write the last page of the book.

If you live long enough, you'll experience everything.

Actually I'd had a certain amount of experience in Europe in the inter-war period, as a banker, and I was also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Chamber of Commerce.

In the case of my book, I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience, etc.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.