The financial crisis and the Great Recession posed the most significant macroeconomic challenges for the United States in a half-century, leaving behind high unemployment and below-target inflation and calling for highly accommodative monetary policies.

If the public understands the central bank's views on the economy and monetary policy, then households and businesses will take those views into account in making their spending and investment plans; policy will be more effective as a result.

Real short- and long-term rates were relatively high in the late-1990s, so financial excess can also arise without a low-rate environment.

Jerome Powell Quotes