William McChesney Martin

In the field of monetary and credit policy, precautionary action to prevent inflationary excessses is bound to have some onerous effects -- if it did not it would be ineffective and futile.  Those who have the task of making such policy don't expect you to applaud.  The Federal Reserve, as one writer put it, after the recent increase in the discount rate, is in the position of the chaperone who has ordered the punch bowl removed just when the party was really warming up.

My interest in a monetary policy directed toward a dollar of stable value is not based on the feeling that price stability is a more important national objective than either maximum sustainable growth or a high level of employment, but rather on the reasoned conclusion that the objective of price stability is an essential prerequisite for their achievement.

Quoted in a speech by Bill Poole

These considerations suggest that the current pattern of international capital flows represents a win-win scenario: Developing economies gain access to better financial services, and industrial economies enjoy the larger quantities of imports they can purchase with this financing. These explanations also suggest that the uphill flow of capital will be reversed to the extent that financial systems of emerging-market economies develop and improve. Because such a process is likely to take time, this set of explanations suggests that the uphill flow of capital is likely to persist for a while.