I personally believe that there's going to be a good case for the government preserving some type of guarantee to make sure that people have the ability to borrow to finance a house even in a very damaging recession. I think there's going to be a good case for that.

The choice is between which mistake is easier to correct: underdoing it or overdoing it.

Financial crises require governments.

The substantial uncertainty about the path of asset price movements going forward necessarily reduces the case for altering policy in advance of the move.

The world is likely to view any temporary extension of the income tax cuts for the top two percent as a prelude to a long-term or permanent extension, and that would hurt economic recovery as well by undermining confidence that we're prepared to make a commitment today to bring down our future deficits.

Looking past the immediate crisis, a more resilient system must be built on stronger and better designed shock absorbers, both in the major institutions and in the infrastructure of the financial system.

I think we're not going to preserve Fannie and Freddie in anything like their current form. We're going to have to bring fundamental change to that market.

We judged that a sudden, disorderly failure of Bear would have brought with it unpredictable but severe consequences for the functioning of the broader financial system and the broader economy, with lower equity prices, further downward pressure on home values, and less access to credit for companies and households.

There is a basic lesson on financial crises that governments tend to wait too long, underestimate the risks, want to do too little. And it ultimately gets away from them, and they end up spending more money, causing much more damage to the economy.

The major economic policy challenges facing the nation today - pick your favorites among the usual suspects of low public and household savings, concerns about educational quality and achievement, high and rising income inequality, the large imbalances between our social insurance commitments and resources - are not about monetary policy.

And I think it's a prudent, responsible way, given the scale of the emergency, the scale of the damage still facing America, that we finance these additional support for the unemployed as well as the support for small business. We think there's a good case for doing it now. We want to do it in an overall fiscally responsible way.

Never before in modern times has so much of the world been simultaneously hit by a confluence of economic and financial turmoil such as we are now living through.

Some think that by preparing to deal with crises you make them more likely. I think the wiser judgment is the contrary. In this area at least, if you want peace or stability, it's better to prepare for war or instability.

As financial markets continue to broaden and deepen, the behavior of asset prices will play an important role in the formulation of monetary policy going forward, perhaps a more important role than in the past.

I personally believe that there's going to be a good case for the government preserving some type of guarantee to make sure that people have the ability to borrow to finance a house even in a very damaging recession. I think there's going to be a good case for that.

Although this crisis in some ways started in the United States, it is a global crisis. We bear a substantial share of the responsibility for what has happened, but factors that made the crisis so acute and so difficult to contain lie in a broader set of global forces that built up in the years before the start of our current troubles.

Monetary policy itself cannot sensibly be directed at reducing imbalances.

The recognition that things that are not sustainable will eventually come to an end does not give us much of a guide to whether the transition will be calm or exciting.

This crisis is not simply a more severe version of the usual business cycle recession, the typical downturn in which economies ultimately adjust and stabilize.

The government can help, but we need to make this transition now to a recovery led by private investment, private.

In the financial system we have today, with less risk concentrated in banks, the probability of systemic financial crises may be lower than in traditional bank-centered financial systems.

The rest of the world needs the US economy and financial system to recover in order for it to revive. We remain at the center of global economic activity with financial and trade ties to every region of the globe.

We will not support returning Fannie and Freddie to the role they played before conservatorship, where they fought to take market share from private competitors while enjoying the privilege of government support.

The plausible outcomes range from the gradual and benign to the more precipitous and damaging.

This crisis exposed very significant problems in the financial systems of the United States and some other major economies. Innovation got too far out in front of the knowledge of risk.

Most consequential choices involve shades of gray, and some fog is often useful in getting things done.

It is very important for people to understand that the United States of America and no country around the world can devalue its way to prosperity, to be competitive. It is not a viable, feasible strategy, and we will not engage in it.

But what we're determined to do, and what the reforms will do is to make sure this system goes back to its core purpose of taking the savings of Americans and from investors around the world and allocating those to people with an idea, not just the largest companies in the country, but to small businesses with an idea and a plan for growing.

Most consequential choices involve shades of gray and some fog is often useful in getting things done.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Never underestimate a child's ability to get into more trouble.

We have developed this unbelievable ability to deny. We have to. If we didn't, we'd go crazy.

To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

Handcuffing the ability of states and localities to develop clean fuels in the cheapest possible way, using local resources, is not sound or sensible policy.

I realised from a very early age that God gave me a gift, and that gift was to run, and I wanted to use it to the best of my ability.

My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.

The key to Operations at Wal-Mart is their ability to maintain the highest standards while at the same time getting things done with lockstep execution.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

The Stones are a different kind of group. I realized that when I joined them. It's not really so much their musical ability, it's just they have a certain kind of style and attitude which is unique.

I liked his ability to deal with a lot of the negativity that surrounded him. Even though he was in a world that he didn't want to be in, he still saw the bigger picture.

We have the most flexible and adaptive economy. Making sure we sustain the ability of the American economy to perform well is really the priority of economic policy.

The system that enables the most people to earn the most success is free enterprise, by matching up people's skills, interests, and abilities. In contrast, redistribution simply spreads money around. Even worse, it attenuates the ability to earn success by perverting economic incentives.

Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

Get that right, then- if you get the quality right, then the marketability or whatever; your ability to sell videos or your ability to earn money or whatever, will follow naturally. But try to be creatively lead rather than market lead. And that's important to me.

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

I ask the American people to consider the legacy this administration has handed us in the defense budget as we spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars without the tools and ability to track these dollars.