Fed Chairman Summary of Bernanke's Speech to the Economic Club of New York

Fed Chairman Ben Barnanke gave a speech today to the Economic Club of New York in which he said it was too early to tell if the worst was over from the credit crunch. He had a few other interesting nuggets of insight.

These include:

On housing:

"It remains too early to assess the extent to which household and business spending will be affected by the weakness in housing and the tightening in credit conditions."

"Conditions in financial markets have shown some improvement since the worst of the storm in mid-August, but a full recovery of market functioning is likely to take time and we may well see some setbacks."

He also believes housing will continue to slump:

"The further contraction in housing is likely to be a significant drag on growth in the current quarter and through early next year."

In terms of jobs, he said:

"The labor market has shown some signs of cooling, but these are quite tentative so far, and real income is still growing at a solid pace."

He also commented that according to Fed data, inflation remained in check:

"The limited data that we have received since the September FOMC meeting are consistent with continued moderate increases in consumer prices"

He defended the half point rates cuts: