It's extremely important for our banks to have more capital, higher quality capital.

Maturity transformation is a central part of the economic function of banks and many other types of financial intermediaries.

The trust institutions have in the marketplace, the confidence customers and suppliers and workers and employees have, are very important to a business's effectiveness.

In the five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment in the United States since the Great Depression.

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%.

People stop buying things, and that is how you turn a slowdown into a recession.

Some degree of inequality in income and wealth, of course, would occur even with completely equal opportunity because variations in effort, skill, and luck will produce variations in outcomes.

Policy makers should be compelled to take action given the serious costs of long-term unemployment when overall unemployment is already high. A week of unemployment is worse when it is experienced as part of a longer spell.

We're charged by Congress with regulating financial institutions. We take that mission seriously. We are tough supervisors and regulators.

By putting downward pressure on interest rates, the Fed is trying to make financial conditions more accommodative - supporting asset values and lower borrowing costs for households and businesses and thus encouraging the spending that spurs job creation and a stronger recovery.

Paying interest on reserve balances enables the Fed to break the strong link between the quantity of reserves and the level of the federal funds rate and, in turn, allows the Federal Reserve to control short-term interest rates when reserves are plentiful.

Our objective in regulation should be to put in place tough enough regulation and capital and liquidity standards that we level the playing field and make it costly.

A wide range of possible fiscal policy tools and approaches could enhance the cyclical stability of the economy. For example, steps could be taken to increase the effectiveness of the automatic stabilizers, and some economists have proposed that greater fiscal support could be usefully provided to state and local governments during recessions.

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.

Over a long period of time, technological change is something that has been important in reducing manufacturing employment - absolutely and as a share of jobs in the economy.

During the 1970s, inflation expectations rose markedly because the Federal Reserve allowed actual inflation to ratchet up persistently in response to economic disruptions - a development that made it more difficult to stabilize both inflation and employment.

When you hire a nanny, the question you ask yourself is, 'What's best for my precious child?' And do you really want someone who feels that your motive in life is to minimize the amount you spend on your child?

To me, the greatest asset of the Fed is the people. We have a tremendously dedicated staff... They feel proud to work for the Fed because this is such a competent, professional and well-respected organization.

Strapped by tight credit and plummeting sales, businesses have overhauled the way they manage supply chains, inventory, production practices and staffing.

There is a painful joke that Europeans often tell of their Gallic neighbors: God created France, the most beautiful country in the world with so much good in it, and ended up feeling guilty about it. He had to do something to make it fair. And so, he created the French people.

Stockholm is surely an urban planner's dream. Everything works. Everything looks good.

In the aftermath of any war or genocide, healing and reconciliation are ultimate aspirations.

Sarajevo was this beautiful city, very cosmopolitan, multiethnic, full of wonderful people, artists and writers and poets and Serbs and Muslims and Croats, and living side by side. And then this medieval siege, and it was a medieval siege, came, and the Bosnian Serbs were on the hills lobbing in rockets and grenades and mortars.

Lake Como has always been a magnet for the elite.

Sibling rivalry was, and still is to this day, rampant in my family. We were all competing for my parents' divided attention.

In a very straightforward way, I am a terrible reporter. I'm not someone who can go into a story and not get involved.

Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life.

Once Iraq became a hot bed for kidnapping, reporters had to use every kind of trick they could manage to avoid it. This included chase cars, security men for more prosperous agencies and networks, and GPS signals on satellite phones that could pinpoint the journalist's locations.

Human memory is short and terribly fickle.

I see so many people get so wrapped up in wanting to get a bigger SUV or a bigger house. But then I think, 'My God, I could have been born a woman in the Congo.'

Manhattan is increasingly less available to average-income earners.

When you write non-fiction, you sit down at your desk with a pile of notebooks, newspaper clippings, and books and you research and put a book together the way you would a jigsaw puzzle.

It's always disappointing to come across phony do-gooders. And it's easy to scoff at celebrities working in war zones.

Africa is a very dangerous place.

I spent a good part of the nineties roaming the Earth writing about conflict. It was very grueling. I was beginning to find this way of life was, wow, addictive and deeply meaningful.

It is a well known urban myth that the French don't trust banks and store their money under their mattress. It's not that they are tight with money - they just don't trust anyone.

No one lives on credit in France because banks don't allow overdrafts and zero percent credit cards do not exist.

When I did a year-long study in 2005 of European countries integrating Muslims into their cultures, France came in the lowest of the rank. Sweden was not far behind, though, which is worrying, as racism in France is much closer to the bone.

Nonviolence worked in Serbia, and it can work in other countries seeking their freedom.

I know being pregnant and giving birth is the most wonderful thing on Earth. I know that after you have a baby, there is a sense of addiction, a need to have another. It's biological.

I'm not sure that finding a husband at university made me any less of a feminist or an academic. I still soaked up Susan Faludi; I still read Doris Lessing. But I did it at the same time I met someone who I felt was my soulmate.

Every time I went to the doctor when I was in my twenties, he repeated the same thing to me: don't wait too long to have children.

Even as a small child, I wondered why the Dominican nuns who educated me were subservient to the Jesuit priests who educated my brothers.

There is a romantic, often misguided, misconception among the British that life in France is akin to life in Paradise.

I love magazines. I always read 'Time,' 'Newsweek' and 'The Economist.' When I get my hair cut, French 'Vogue,' French 'Elle,' 'Paris Match' - I read them all in 10 minutes.

For the first five years of Luca's life, I desperately wanted to be a good mother and not to pass on this trauma and darkness that his father and I had experienced, but there's a danger of suffocating your kids, too.

There are people who are seekers and people who aren't.

From the earliest age, I was just different. I think that's part of every writer's little revenge. You think, 'I'm not a blonde, blue-eyed cheerleader but I'm going to get out of here and do something.'

My earliest memories are of the civil rights era. My earliest experiences were rage.

In Iraq during the days of Saddam, I had a government minder who followed me everywhere, reported on my activities.