“I certainly don’t regard it as a mistake,” she said during the panel discussion at the International House in New York. “We took one step.”

The Fed typically raises its benchmark interest rate to slow down a strengthening economy and lowers it to boost a struggling one. Confronted in 2008 with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Fed slashed its target rate all the way to zero and did not raise it again until December, ending an unprecedented effort to stimulate the nation’s economy.

But prominent economists — and even some officials inside the central bank — had urged the Fed to stay its hand until there was more evidence that the U.S. recovery could withstand the turmoil overseas. Indeed, global economic headwinds have forced the Fed to push back expectations for a second rate hike. Instead of forecasting four rate increases this year, the central bank now only foresees two.

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Yellen was joined by the three living Fed chairmen: her predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke; Alan Greenspan, who presided over a period of relative economic calm and prosperity in the 1990s and early 2000s; and Paul Volcker, whose tenure was marked by his campaign to combat inflation in the 1980s. Greenspan appeared via videoconference.

Together, they have steered the American economy for nearly four decades, what many historians consider the modern era of the 101-year-old central bank. Yellen said she believes the economy is on “a solid course,” while Bernanke downplayed the risk that the country might fall back into recession.

“Just because we’ve been in seven years of recovery, doesn’t mean we’re due for a recession at all,” he said. But Greenspan said he remained worried about America’s long-term prospects without a plan to address the strain on federal coffers from the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. Under existing policies, he said, the government faced “a massive expansion” of debt.

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There were more lighthearted moments, however, as the officials reflected on their own leadership. Moderator and CNN host Fareed Zakaria at one point asked Greenspan, who was famous for his convoluted speeches, whether he was “deliberately trying to be incomprehensible.” Greenspan smiled in response and replied, “I thought I succeeded marvelously.”

And when Zakaria tried to pin Bernanke on how the Fed planned to unwind the massive $4.5 trillion balance sheet it has accumulated since the financial crisis, the former central bank chief deadpanned, “I don’t have to do it.” The audience erupted in laughter, as Bernanke turned to Yellen, who sat beside him.