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People concerned about inflation today tend to buy big houses and nice cars.

It was the biggest inflation and the most sustained inflation that the United States had ever had.

We know that inflation distorts economic behavior. In the 1970s, a combination of high tax rates and inflation prompted investors to flee production in favor of protection.

Since World War II, inflation - the apparently inexorable rise in the prices of goods and services - has been the bane of central bankers.

Businesses that have gone through an episode of hyperinflation become understandably alert to the threat of it: at the first hint of inflation, they're likely to increase prices, since they've learned that if they don't, and inflation hits, their businesses will be wrecked.

It's true that monetary policy was too lax for too long, and the government encouraged lending to people who were unlikely to repay their loans.

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.

The government will always tell you that it wants low inflation. The real issue is the horizon over which to bring inflation down.

I continue to think many of the factors holding down inflation are transitory... We want to be careful not to jump to a premature conclusion about what's in store for the U.S. economy.

The reason inflation was brought down to manageable levels, by the time of Ronald Reagan's re-election, was directly attributable to Jimmy Carter's very courageous act, hiring a Federal Reserve chair, with the charge to induce a recession. That recession was probably the reason he didn't win a second term.