RAGHURAM RAJAN

Banks are employing risky derivatives strategies to goose up returns….the interbank market could freeze up, and one could well have a full blown financial crisis.

Ultimately, in the long run we need to immunise our system from being overly responsive to fluctuations in the exchange rate; that is, people should, by and large, be reasonably hedged, or they should borrow more in domestic currency rather than foreign currency.

As a country that does not belong to any power bloc, India cannot afford to put itself in the position of needing multilateral support - a trap into which even developed countries, like Portugal and Spain, have fallen.

Endorsing unconventional monetary policies unquestioningly is tantamount to saying that it is acceptable to distort asset prices if there are other domestic constraints on growth.

Uncertainty of any sort results in volatility, and Brexit will be no exception.

Every adverse development across the world affects the rest of the world in some way.

Common man is always benefited by a rate cut.

Competition is like a treadmill. If you stand still, you get swept off. But when you run, you can never really get ahead of the treadmill and cover new terrain - so you never run faster than the speed that is set.

Customers often value a good more when its price goes up. One reason may be its signaling value. An expensive handcrafted mechanical watch may tell time no more accurately than a cheap quartz model; but, because few people can afford one, buying it signals that the owner is rich.

Monetary policy is like juggling six balls... it is not 'interest rate up, interest rate down.' There is the exchange rate, there are long term yields, there are short term yields, there is credit growth.

It is the central bank governor, unlike other regulators or government secretaries, who has command over significant policy levers and has to occasionally disagree with the most powerful people in the country.

Too many years away from academia renders you pretty incompetent at research and teaching. So I had to go back.

I have said repeatedly that the way to sustainable growth is to bring down inflation to much more reasonable levels.

One of the difficulties of a job in the, quote, 'real world' is you don't really get time to shut yourself off in a room and think.

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

The more that everyone has access to the same educational opportunities, the more society will tend to accept some receiving disproportionate rewards. After all, they themselves have a chance to be winners.

The idea was never for me to be a career bureaucrat or career technocrat; it was more about where I could implement ideas and reform programs.

How do we get more politicians to move from 'fixing' the system to reforming the system? The obvious answer is to either improve the quality of public services or reduce the public's dependence on them. Both approaches are necessary.

Taking my bike out and riding the bike path along Lake Shore Drive, that's one of the great experiences in my life. And I hope to do it as long as I can.

The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama has argued that liberal democracies, with their political freedom and economic success, have three important pillars: a strong government, the rule of law, and democratic accountability. I would add a fourth: free markets.

In India, we say one thing, and we do something else.

I am a 10th class pass in Hindi. From 7th grade to 12th grade, I was in Delhi; before that, I was abroad. I came in not knowing a word of Hindi in 7th grade and learned Hindi and passed the exam in 10th. I think I was north of 50 percent, so I feel very proud of that accomplishment.

If developed countries' citizens want to feel slightly better about their economies' slow growth and high unemployment, they should contemplate how much worse matters could be without the institutions that they have.

By killing transparency and competition, crony capitalism is harmful to free enterprise, opportunity, and economic growth. And by substituting special interests for the public interest, it is harmful to democratic expression.

Instead of abandoning competition and giving banks protected monopolies once again, the public would be better served by making it easier to close banks when they get into trouble. Instead of making banking boring, let us make it a normal industry, susceptible to destruction in the face of creativity.