Yellen, Janet

"I'm just opposed to a pure inflation-only mandate in which the only thing a central bank cares about is inflation and not employment," Yellen says now. "I've never been opposed to having a numerical objective. I don't think the committee can operate intelligently unless people can agree on what we're trying to accomplish."

"Certainly an important part of what I try to do in my role on the committee is take my personal point of view and try to explain it as clearly as I possibly can and advocate for it," she said. "But it's not just 100 percent that. I do absolutely understand that the committee needs to make a decision and we need to find something to do that can command sufficient support."

"But monetary policy is not a panacea," she said. "There are questions about the efficacy of unconventional policy tools and their use may entail some cost."

"We failed completely to understand the complexity of what the impact of the decline - the national decline - in housing prices would be in the financial system," she said at her confirmation hearings